


Connotation

by FoxofSpades



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Gen, Gwen-centric, Quest, gwen and kilgharrah are friends, gwen saves the day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-15
Updated: 2014-01-15
Packaged: 2018-01-08 19:25:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 32,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1136464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FoxofSpades/pseuds/FoxofSpades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Camelot is cursed by an enemy called up from a realm of monsters. Gwen is the only one left, and it's up to her to save the kingdom. At least, according to a cryptic old dragon. The key to saving her friends and home, however, lies far to the north in the hands of the last person she wants to go to for help: Morgana.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Black Eyes and Bee Stings

**Author's Note:**

> This is cross-posted from my ff.net account. 
> 
> This story takes place mid-season four. Uther is dead and Arthur is king, Gwen is still a servant and Morgana is on the run. Enjoy!

 It happens on a Wednesday, as Gwen thinks all bad things are wont to do.  She has never particularly liked Wednesdays; they’re when she has the most washing to do, and the water pump never cooperates.          

So it stands to reason that the one time a competent, sensible enemy chooses to attack Camelot, it is a Wednesday.

Gwen might have been able to do something about it, too, if only she had noticed in time. But she hadn’t, as there is no warning, so there’s really no use speculating.

Her morning starts in the usual way: wake up at the crack of dawn, fetch water (from a creaky, difficult pump) for various visiting nobles’ baths, and fetch breakfast for them all, then take the laundry down to the laundresses.  

It is on the steps to the washer’s, arms full of a bundle of worn dresses, when she is politely informed that something is amiss.

“Gwen! Guinevere!” Gwen whips around in alarm as someone _screams_ her name from behind. Sir Leon is running full-tilt towards her, covered in blood.

“Leon! What is it?” she cries, dropping the bundle to steady him.  He leans on her, favoring his left leg and with a nasty gash on his side.  It’s a wonder he’s still moving. Possible explanations run through her mind. Knights, sorcerers, killer chickens? (That one hadn’t been fun).

“Gwen!” he gasps again and grabs her arm, dragging her down and against the wall. “Get down!”  She huddles beside him fearfully, already preparing herself for the worst.  _Not chickens, not chickens…_

“What’s happening, Leon?”

“An attack.  It’s…” he takes a deep breath, “It is King Abernard’s army from Halesia. There is some sort of sorcerer as well.  Their forces have subdued Prince Arthur, and, so far as I can tell, everyone else in the citadel. I don’t know where they are now.”

Gwen glares at the dropped laundry. Figures it would be a Wednesday. 

“What do we do?!”

“You need to get out,” he urges, moving to a crouch and poking his head back around the corner. “Oh- damn it all, they’re coming! Run, Guinevere, I’ll hold them off!”

Gwen hears the sound of swords being drawn, and doesn’t stick around. Let Leon do his hero thing. She dashes down the rest of the stairs, skidding around the corner and into the servant’s quarters.  Whoever’s attacking Leon won’t think to check down here, if they’re anything like the knights in Camelot. They’ll be too busy paying attention to the more important parts of the castle. Heart beating wildly, Gwen ducks into a pantry and tucks herself between the sacks of flour in the back. She pulls an empty sack over her head and she is just another bag of grain. It’ll work, she knows from experience.

_I really have had too much practice with sieges,_ she thinks. _It can’t be particularly healthy._

Gwen takes a deep breath and _stays calm_. That’s what Arthur’s forever telling his knights. No losing your head, or you’ll literally lose it. She knows what to do. Make a plan. She can’t very well hide in the pantry forever- if what Leon said is true, a king and a sorcerer in cahoots, then Camelot is in for it this time. It’s not often they get a smart enemy, but unfortunately it’s the kingdom’s unlucky day. Leon is probably dead or imprisoned now… but she shouldn’t think like that. It isn’t the time.

She needs to get out of Camelot and find help.

But… what if Leon was mistaken? She should check the castle, just to be sure that there’s no help anywhere. Or imprisoned friends. _Don’t think dead friends…_

She shakes the thought out of her head and smooths her dress nervously. Frowns down at it- that will have to go.  A dress is all well and good for court life where it’s required, but pants are much more practical for espionage and danger.  Not that she much fancies danger, but it seems that’s what she’ll be getting.

Gwen has always thought of herself as a practical girl, and sees no reason to change that now.  After all, Camelot had faced all sorts of sieges before, albeit from more stupid enemies. But she has to do something this time, and there’s no use diddling about it. She’s seen good people lost to chickens from too much worry.

Pause, check for sounds. None.  This _would_ be unusual in the servants’ quarters this time of day, but now _really_ isn’t usual.  _Quickly, now, Gwen-_ she ducks out from the pantry and slinks along the walls, quickly reaching the cots.  Rifles through the clothes at the end of the bed- _Sorry, Robert_ , she thinks, _but you’re closest to my size._  

The pants and tunic fall a little loose at the waist and shoulders, but feel infinitely better than the dress. Gwen grew up working with her father in the smithy and playing knights with her brother. There is something reassuring about the familiarity of the clothes.

She folds the dress neatly at the end of Robert’s cot and slips back to the entrance of the stairs.  This is going to be the tricky part: navigating the castle without alerting anyone. She just has to be extra careful. 

If careful means slamming headfirst into a knight dressed in black armor, then she’s doing splendidly.  The soldier gives an indignant shout, but Gwen is already shoving past him and up the stairs.

She runs hard while trying and failing to stay calm. Behind her the man shouts an alarm, but she doesn’t let her stride doesn’t falter. Legs working madly, Gwen barrels up the steps and around corners.  Okay, so maybe this isn’t the best plan she could have come up with.

She needs somewhere to hide, somewhere she can escape from. Where?  Apparently Arthur’s room is going to be the only option, as she hears men running behind her and the king’s is the closest door. She skids to a halt and yanks it open, diving inside and shutting the door as softly and quickly as possible. 

 What now?  The room is deserted, under the bed is hardly an option- who knows what lives there. Behind the curtains? Stupid.  That leaves the cabinet, full of royal underwear. Gwen squirms into it, presses as close to the back as she can among all the hanging tunics.  _Arthur will never hear of this._

She hears the men outside- feet stampede past the door, but none come in. She silently congratulates herself for hiding here. After all, why would a servant hide in a king’s room?

Gwen stays, breathing stiffly, in the cabinet for what seems like years, but is in fact only half an hour, too afraid to peek out the door to see if the coast is clear.  She still hears the occasional stomp of booted feet outside the door, so all she can do is stand and wait.

Then, thirty three minutes and twenty seconds later, the enemy comes to her.

Gwen has just released a steadying breath and is in the process of pushing the cabinet door open. When the door to Arthur’s room opens too, she gives a startled jump and slams _her_ door closed again. Part of her is saying it might like to curl up and have a bit of a cry right now, but she gathers her wits, tells the voice to get a hold of itself, and shuffles to look out of a gap in the paneling.

What she sees makes little sense.

A man in black armor heaves a familiar gangly manservant onto Arthur’s bed while another watches.

“You are certain the drug will last?” the watching man asks. He has a trim black beard of the kind that makes Gwen think of cockroaches, and pointy eyebrows.  The other, who has no bug-like features, nods firmly.

“Emrys won’t wake for a week, and when he does we can subdue him again easily.  Here, if it sets your mind at ease,” and the black-armored man points splayed fingers at Merlin’s body, mutters some words, and Merlin is tied by the hands and feet to the bed.

“He won’t be doing anything now,” says the sorcerer, “And he will be undisturbed here. Until we want him to be, that is.”

Gwen, in the cabinet, feels her stomach turn to ice.

“Who would look for a servant in the king’s bedroom?” the cockroach man chuckles, and holds open the door. Gwen, had she not been physically holding her mouth closed, would have laughed from sheer nerves. “Now let us go, a guard reported a stray servant by running around. He could be a problem.”

“They lie,” the sorcerer promises. “We have Emrys, the prince, the knights, and every other breathing person in Camelot.  No one could have escaped.”

“Do not overestimate us,” the man warns. “To dismiss any threat, no matter how small, would be foolish.” Then he tilts his head towards the door and exits.

The sorcerer hesitates, turning once around the room, eyes landing on the cabinet Gwen is hidden in. 

Time slows down.

The sorcerer’s eyes meet hers, and Gwen freezes, petrified. That gaze goes straight to her soul, pokes and prods at it with jagged knives and hot coals. Her breath catches and she has to steady herself against the wall and turn her face away: the sorcerer’s eyes are a deep, unnerving pitch black, the sort of shade that peers at you from under the bed at night, that stalks dreams and waits around corners.

The moment is broken as the sorcerer finishes glancing around and obligingly follows the man out. The door thumps firmly shut. Gwen’s knees go weak.

She stands shuddering for a moment, then shakes off the chills from the sorcerer’s stare and eases out of the cabinet and over to Merlin, placing a hand on his forehead. It’s clammy with sweat.

“Oh, Merlin,” she sighs, “Why is it always you?” _And did they call him “Emrys”?_ she thinks.  Strange.  This may even beat “mysteriously quickly completed chores” and “random yet perfectly-timed appearances” on her list of Suspicious Things about Merlin.

Well, it’s clear she won’t be getting any help from him.  And if what the sorcerer said is true, and she has an ugly feeling it is, she won’t be getting help from anywhere else, either.

She needs to leave, then. It’s too dangerous in the castle anyway. She must get help from outside Camelot. The thought has her a bit terrified, honestly, but this isn’t the first time she’s been outside the kingdom looking for help.

It is, however, the first time she’ll be doing it alone.

Gwen shrugs the nerves off for the moment and paces in a quick circle.  She needs some sort of weapon.

Arthur probably has weapons, she realizes, and searches the room. An ornamental dagger lies in the first desk drawer she opens, surrounded by crumpled papers and a few colorful coins and rocks. _Arthur the packrat,_ she thinks. The dagger, when lifted, reveals a note written in a scratchy, familiar script.

_Arthur, Happy Christmas. The dagger has some unique properties that you might find useful. Don’t lose it. Merlin_

Gwen shakes her head; Merlin and Arthur are keeping secrets. Nothing new there. But whatever Merlin did to the dagger hopefully won’t make it any less effective.

She goes to tuck the blade into her belt and remembers that Robert hadn’t stored one with his clothes. Irresponsible, really. Pants could fall down at any moment. Not that it matters right this second.

That’s easily, though hesitantly, remedied. It’s an emergency, and Arthur wouldn’t have minded so much in the first place, right? She seizes the first one she finds, which, upon finding it covered in the Pendragon crest and an assortment of rubies, is quickly swapped for the second one she finds: a much more muted brown with odd golden buttons sewed on for no apparent purpose.

The dagger slides quite nicely into a useful strap made for just such an occasion. One more guilty rummage in Arthur’s wardrobe and a black cloak is heavy on her shoulders.  The enemies think she’s a boy; it might do to keep it that way.

Gwen wanders back to Merlin’s side, frowning in thought. Usually it’s him who’s always running off to save Camelot. She isn’t really prepared for this sort of thing. If he could only talk! He probably knows where she could get help.

“What do I do, Merlin?” she asks helplessly, stroking his hair back.  “And what on earth did they give you?”

_A good reason to get going quickly_ , she tells herself.  Who knows what effect the drug is having? He’ll need help as soon as possible, and Gaius isn’t exactly available.

“O-okay, Gwen,” she breathes, placing a hand on the dagger reassuringly. “Time to go. You can do this.”  _Get out of the citadel._ That’s her first priority.

Gwen pulls the hood of Arthur’s cloak up over her face, making sure her hair is covered.

Push the door open- _slowly, Gwen, gently_ \- she pokes her head out the available space and peers around. Deserted.

_Now go! Down to the kitchen, out the delivery door! Don’t stop! Getoutgetoutgetout!_

Heart pounding and nerves sloshing, she dashes down the hall, keeping her footsteps soft. She reaches the end of the corridor, whipping around the corner without hesitation.

Mistake.

Three soldiers in black with long spears stop mid-march, and level the sticks at the oncoming servant.

Perhaps Gwen should have stopped, but really she _couldn’t_. Her swing round the corner combined with nerves have by this point filled her with so much panic that she barrels straight through the guards, dodging all three spears by jumping and ducking with adrenaline-fueled agility that she hadn’t known she possesses.

“Halt!” one yells as she flees the scene (funnily enough, not complying with his shouted command).  “Stop!”

She couldn’t if she wanted to.  Her feet fly on terrified wings, swinging her wildly around corners as her upper body attempts with all it’s might to keep balance.  Her mind, on panic-clarity mode, directs her pin-wheeling legs through the shortest cuts to the kitchen.

She pays little attention to the two soldiers who follow her as she runs (she has no idea what happened to the third one).  Arthur’s cloak flaps dramatically behind her, marking her path- right, left, long corridor, down the stairs three at a time-

She fumbles the last leap down the steps and trips, barely catching herself from a painful headache. Her palms and knees sting from slamming into the stone floor. The two soldiers are at the top of the stairs. _Too close!_

One throws a spear.

Gwen springs to her feet.

A bee stings Gwen’s leg.

She slaps at it irritably, bees didn’t usually get into here. She’s in the kitchen now.  As she runs through she seizes a sack of flour resting on the ground and heaves it behind her with all her might. White dust flies in a cloud through the air and the pursuers choke and cough and she hopes vindictively that it stings their eyes.

_There!_ The delivery door, most often used for the kitchen boys to cart ingredients in and out.  Now it serves a different purpose- an escape. Gwen streaks through it and doesn’t look back.

And thank heavens she chose that route. The side door doesn’t empty in to the main courtyard but the back streets, where there are no enemy knights. But the ones behind are still pursuing, she hears them.

She runs faster, stretching her legs as far as possible, but, for some reason, she keeps tripping.

But she’s almost out of the fire, now. If she makes it to the lower town, she’ll be free. She knows at least six different ways out of the city, eight if she really stretches it, and she pictures the map in her mind as she leads them on a breathless, winding chase of turns and ducks around corners and stalls.

Only when she breaks through the invisible barrier that separates the peasant houses from the market and upper town does she know she’s safe (but she doesn’t slow down).

Gwen thinks it might be a good idea to hide in a house for the day, then get away from Camelot under the cover of darkness. It seems like something Arthur would do.

She knocks on a door close to the edge of the town.  Waits.  Knocks again.

Pushes the door open cautiously. 

Screams.

A man and woman are slumped eerily over at the table in the room, silent and still. Gwen claps a hand over her own mouth to stifle the noise and hurries over to check for a pulse. Hand trembling, she braces herself for the worst… the woman sighs gently. Gwen takes a startled step back, then finds two pulses.  They’re just asleep.

_Forget hiding here,_ Gwen thinks when she checks another house with the same results, _it’s a bit too creepy. What has happened? Is this what the sorcerer did?_

She starts to jog to the tree line, still, aggravatingly, tripping over nothing. Abruptly, something in her leg goes “no thanks, if it’s all the same to you,” and promptly ceases to work.

On the ground Gwen shakily tugs the hem of the pants down until she can see the surprising gash that’s bleeding all over her thigh.

“T-that’s just bloody b-brilliant,” Gwen mumbles to herself, and whimpers slightly. Her fingers flutter uselessly over the wound, turning red. Her breath is coming shorter, like there isn’t enough air.

_Calm down. You need help._ She glances around her and forces herself to focus. A few clotheslines and then trees, no really close houses.

_That guard must have hit me with the spear,_ Gwen hypothesizes as she drags herself over to the drying clothes amidst an unprecedented amount of pain. She needs stop, but if she does she’ll never get there. It takes her quite a while, because she is also attempting to escape the black spots that keep appearing at the edge of her vision.

As it happens, Gwen has hypothesized correctly. A guard- his name was Derek, if you’re interested- had heaved his spear down the stairs at her in a desperate attempt to get his brother, the second guard, to believe he wasn’t as useless as everyone thought.  It was sheer luck that it hit Gwen at all.  Sadly for Derek, no one actually saw it hit Gwen, so his efforts were wasted.

None of that matters to Guinevere, who is struggling not to pass out from pain as she wraps a stolen cloth around her leg, tying it tightly.

That done, she sits for a few moments, calming down and doing some deep breathing exercises. Then she heaves herself upright on the pole of the clothesline and grabs a nearby broom to use as an awkward crutch.

She hobbles into the woods battered, exhausted, in excruciating pain, and with no idea what to do.

~xXx~

Far away, Kilgharrah breathes a long tail of flame as magic screams. The stench of dark magic, strong dark magic, reaches him from even this distance away.

Almost at the same time his Dragonlord cries out in his mind, through the bond that ties them. The call echoes and fades, and the Great Dragon takes to the air. Camelot is calling.

 

 


	2. Hungry Birds and Healing Words

Crunch. Crunch. Snap!

Ten minutes into the woods Gwen gives up and slumps against the roots of a tree, throwing the broom-crutch down beside her. Honestly, it’s no use trying to move quietly when you’ve got a broom to maneuver under your armpit.

 _Stupid guard_ , she thinks, and stretches her leg out painfully. In the citadel, an odd feeling runs down Derek’s spine, making him feel even more unappreciated.

“Now what?” she huffs at the sky, gesturing to her leg, just in case anyone’s watching. You really can’t do much with a gash like that. It’s likely to get infected, too. Or she’ll get eaten by wild animals or monsters before it has the chance. She could die before anything is done to help Camelot.

Just as Gwen was getting ready to pronounce a few choice words at the sky in a vain attempt to make something happen, something happens. 

That something is a shape winging across the treetops. As Gwen watches the bird, it halts in midair and begins to circle closer and closer over her, gradually proving not to be a bird at all.

For a stupid moment Gwen sits, mouth slack, staring up at it. When her mind catches up with her, she simultaneously scrambles for her broom and tries to bury herself in dry leaves at the base of the tree.

And then the dragon lands.

 Gwen screams and hurls the broom like a spear at the beast, but it only glances off its scales. She remembers the knife and fumbles it out of her belt, holds it, shaking, at the monster.

The monster looks at her, and speaks.

“Lady Guinevere. Greetings.”  The monster looks expectantly at her, but she does little more than whimper and hold the knife tighter.

“Oh, for- calm down, child, I am not going to eat you.”  The thing fixes huge, unblinking golden eyes on her until Gwen stops panicking to breathe, and think.

“Wh-what?”

“I said, I am not particularly hungry at the moment.” Gwen squeaks. The dragon rolls one eye heavenward.  “Not really, girl.”

“You- you made a joke?” says Gwen. “This is h-hardly the most appropriate moment, is it?”

If dragons can frown, this one does.

“Perhaps you are right.  Now, are you all who is left?”

Gwen’s mind really can’t keep up at this rate. 

“Wait, _what_?” she repeats eloquently.  “Hold on a moment! How do you even know my name? Or what’s going on? What _is_ going on?” Her leg aches something awful, not liking this new development at all. She’s like some old person that can detect storms, except her slashed-up leg can predict danger. She wishes her mind would shut up.

The dragon snuffs and sits back on its haunches and she feels like it expects her to get comfortable as well, so she pushes herself painfully out of the leaves and rests against the tree roots once more.

“Well?”

“I am Kilgharrah. I know your name because there are few like me who would not know of Guinevere, just as they would know of Arthur and Merlin.”

“Like you? There are more dragons?” Gwen asks.

“No,” the dragon- Kilgharrah rumbles. “No dragons. Well… none that can yet comprehend the mysteries and truths of the universe. But beings that can see the great destinies that will unfold… yes.”

“Okay…” Gwen says, flustered _.  This is a bit much, isn’t it?_ she thinks to herself. 

There is an intense and awkward span of a few minutes where they both simply look at each other. Then the dragon clears its throat.

“I was called here by the spiritual noise of a powerful magic being enacted.  The bond I have with the Dragonlord compelled me to come as well.”

“What Dragonlord?” asks Gwen. “They’re all dead, aren’t they?”

Kilgharrah inclines his head mysteriously.  Gwen is having none of that, and, tracing their brief conversation, thinks back to what the dragon said earlier about destinies.

“Wait… you said Merlin earlier, didn’t you?” the dragon looks suddenly sheepish- as sheepish as a dragon can look, considering its facial structure.

“No.”

“You did! It definitely isn’t Arthur, so it has to be! Is that why they called him Emrys? He’s a Dragonlord?”

This realization doesn’t surprise Gwen as much as it possibly should. She had always thought there was something funny about Merlin. (Her list on the subject springs to mind). He had always been able to complete an alarming number of chores in an alarmingly short time, which she had always wondered about jealously, and the strangest coincidences always followed him around.

“Emrys?” the dragon says, alarmed. “Who called him this? When?”

“The… the sorcerer,” Gwen tells him.  “They drugged him and tied him up, and then they called him “Emrys”.”

“Merlin is known as Emrys to the druids,” Kilgharrah says gravely, “He is a prophesized warlock, the most powerful that this land will ever know.  If this sorcerer knows Merlin’s true identity, Camelot is in grave danger.”

Gwen holds up a hand for a moment.

“Wait. Merlin is a sorcerer now? I thought you said he was a Dragonlord.”

“He is both,” growls Kilgharrah, clearly fed up with Gwen’s questions. “And now you must tell me exactly what happened in Camelot today.”  So Gwen sums it up as best she can, which what limited knowledge she has of the event. King Abernard of Halesia, joining forces with a sorcerer to conquer the kingdom.

“And everyone is asleep,” she finishes. “I checked a few houses, and it looks like every citizen of Camelot is snoring at their tables, or washing, or whatever. Except for me…”

 Which was a very good point, now that she thinks about it.  Why should she be the only one awake? By all rights she should be drooling on the castle steps

“Why indeed,” mutters Kilgharrah. Gwen squints suspiciously at him. “Are you wearing any protective amulets or talismans? Most are tourist rubbish, of course, but occasionally…”

Gwen pats herself down, and finds her bracelet.

“I’ve got this,” she says, a tad sheepishly. “It’s, um, well, Morgana gave it to me.” She says the last bit quietly. Truly, she knows Morgana’s evil now, but she used to be a good friend.  The bracelet was a present for her birthday, the year before the witch had made herself known. Gwen had very carefully _not_ thought about the bracelet, to avoid the obligation of getting rid of it.

Kilgharrah brings his giant head down in front of her and peers sideways at the band. A thin gold cuff, set with a ringed stone on the underside of the wrist.

“Agate,” he says. “Reinforced with strong protective spells. There is not much magic that can harm you while you possess this.”

Gwen draws her fingers over the stone in wonder. Some birthday present. She spares a moment to be deeply, profoundly, _touched_ , and then another for betrayal.

“I advise you to leave it on. To remove it while still within Camelot’s borders may cause you to fall to the spell.” Gwen nods hurriedly.  “Now, girl, tell me: can you remember anything about the sorcerer?”

Gwen is about to say “No, he was just a man” when she suddenly remembers that unsettling moment in the cabinet.

“N- yes,” she says. “His eyes… they were horrible: pure black.”

“Black?” Kilgharrah says. Gwen chooses not to repeat herself. “Black… sorcerers’ eyes are gold.  Black…”

“What’s black mean?” Gwen asks snappily. Her leg is really starting to hurt her.

“Black, girl, black is the color of a shade’s eyes. Not an ordinary shade. A High Shade.” Gwen can hear the capital letters.

“And what’s a High Shade?”

“A malevolent being.” Gwen snorts. _No, really?_ “Called forth from a divide between this world and a darker one, a land of nightmares and true monsters. When one calls a High Shade one allows it to overshadow one’s body and relinquishes control. Lesser shades have been used against Camelot before, but a High Shade is very different.”

“So the sorcerer’s a shade?”

“High Shade. He must have knowingly allowed the creature to take over his body in order to achieve something. High Shades possess powerful dark magic.”

“What does it want with Camelot?”

“To destroy it, probably.” Gwen sighs. Nothing new there. At times it seems like everything wants to destroy Camelot, from kings to farm animals.

“Why does everyone want to destroy the kingdom? It’s a good place!”

“For that very reason, most likely,” explains Kilgharrah. “There are many great destinies that are to begin in Camelot, which many beings of evil would like to prevent. Not that any will succeed.” He snorts disdainfully.

Gwen thinks about this for a moment, and then about the fact that she as well supposedly has a great destiny. It’s not exactly a comforting thought. More intimidating than anything. She doubts it’s true, anyway.

“So what do we do?” Gwen asks.

“We, Lady Guinevere? We? I can do nothing.  It must be you that does the doing.”

“What, why?  You don’t want Camelot destroyed either, do you?” Gwen says angrily. The thought of going off alone makes her sweat.

“It is not a question of what I _want_ to do, it is a question of what I _can_ do. Merlin called me here, remember. Unconsciously, but called none the less. So here I must remain, tied as I am to the Dragonlord. Besides, I fear I would attract far too much attention.”

“Oh,” says Gwen, disappointed and a little (a lot) afraid. “I’m not exactly cut out for this,” she feels compelled to point out.

“Then you will learn as you go. Would you rather Camelot fall?”

And Gwen can’t really say yes to that, can she? But still, she feels the dragon should come along. He seems fairly confident in these situations, and she could use the help. _The help for what, exactly?_ her mind reminds her. Good point.

“What do I have to do?” she asks. “Assuming you know _how_ to kill a High Shade.” The dragon looks vaguely offended.

“I do,” he states definitely. “The stone known to you as selenite, combined with ingredients already available here, will poison the very essence of the creature.”

“Selenite.” Gwen repeats dully. Is this how heroic quests go? In the most difficult way possible?

“Problem?”

“Yes, that stuff’s really rare! Uther, I mean, the King, I mean… never mind. He banned it. _You_ should know that,” she adds accusingly. “During the purges. It’s got some magical property or the other, so it had to go”

“Damn Uther,” growls the dragon. “Is there none left, girl?” Gwen shakes her head. “Well, where’s the nearest location where you can obtain it?”

“That’d be Embria, far north. The closer surrounding kingdoms were all scared of Uther, so they sort of started following his rules, too. Can’t shades be killed by anything else?”

“Yes,” says Kilgharrah drily. “By venturing into its home dimension by way of ritual sacrifice and killing its source and ancestor: the feared Great High Shade of the Dark.  This also requires a complicated dark magic ritual that includes copious amounts of virgin’s blood. Does this option sound simpler?”

“Not really,” Gwen says, looking green.

“Then _think_ , girl! You won’t have time to get to Embria and back.”

Gwen is on the verge of snapping at the dragon (not the wisest move so it’s probably good that she didn’t, because he can snap back with much more force), when she realizes she’s been rubbing the bracelet in agitation. 

The bracelet.

Morgana.

A memory rushes suddenly to her head.

_A foreign delegate from Embria. Presenting gifts of goodwill to honor a treaty. Dagger for Arthur. Sword for Uther. Pendant for Morgana._

_Pendant for Morgana. “Rare protective stone for my lady. May it bring you good fortune.” Thick white spear of stone on a golden chain._

_Morgana taking a fancy to it. “Isn’t it lovely?” Never takes it off._

“Selenite, is it white?” asks Gwen, hardly daring to breathe. Kilgharrah contemplates her hopefully.

“Yes.”

“Sort of rough and spear shaped?”

“Its crystals often take the form. Where have you seen it?”

“Morgana,” breathes Gwen, staring at her bracelet. “Morgana has a necklace with some on it. A visiting noble gave it to her.” 

“Where is Morgana now?”

“Why are you asking me? She’s evil, isn’t she? I don’t exactly keep tabs on her.” Kilgharrah spends an unsettling moment eyeing her like he’s looking into her soul.

“Where is Morgana now?” he repeats. Gwen huffs.

“Town a bit north in Mercia,” she mutters reluctantly. The dragon chooses not to comment.

“You will find her, then,” he says definitely. “Bring back the stone and we have a hope of saving Camelot.”

“Hang on!” protests Gwen. “I can’t even walk a few steps, how do you think I’m going to get to Mercia and back?”

“What?”

“Oh, for…” Gwen brushes some leaves off her leg and gestures to the bandage. “Why did you think I had that broom? Some soldier threw a spear at my leg! I can’t get anywhere like this, it’s deep, too. Did you really not notice? Just thought I make a habit of sitting in leaves and waiting for dragons to eat me?”

The dragon is silent. One eye rolls curiously in his eye socket. Gwen suspects it might be some tick that happens when he’s thinking.  Whatever it is, it’s very unsettling.

“Very well,” Kilgharrah says finally. “You will heal it.”

“What do you mean, heal? I’m not a physician, and if you haven’t noticed, the actual ones are all asleep!”

Kilgharrah growls.

“Mind your tone, girl. I mean, you will heal it with magic.”

Gwen squawks incoherently for a second before finding words.

“Magic’s illegal! And besides, I’m not a sorceress!” 

“One can learn magic at any age,” Kilgharrah says. “And would you lie here and let your wounds fester while Camelot is destroyed?”

 _It’s illegal!_ Gwen tells herself in her mind. _You could be burned at the stake!_ A little voice whispers back: _Who’s going to know? And anyway, would Arthur do that to you? How long has it been since_ anyone’s _been executed. And why are you even thinking about it, you need to save Camelot!_

_Plus, remember that note with the dagger? Arthur knows that Merlin has magic, apparently. You’ve nothing to fear._

“Fine,” she says eventually. “What do I do?”  Kilgharrah nods approvingly.

“Good. First remove the bandage.” Gwen hisses as the airs stings the raw wound. “Good. Now place your hand over it, and say the incantation.” Before Gwen can ask, he says “It is “ _Þurhhæle dolgbenn_ ”. Try it now.”

Gwen takes a deep breath.

“P-prhel dulgbern…” Gwen tries, hand shaking over the wound. Kilgharrah snorts.

“Horrible. You butchered the pronunciation.” Gwen glares at him.

“I’ve never done this before, you know!” Kilgharrah just shakes his massive head and repeats the spell once more.

“Peerhel dogbum.” She tries again, more definitely. An eye roll from the dragon, and he repeats the words once more.

“Purehell dugbent.”

“Pre- Purhen dogbor.”

Eventually, after numerous tries and much exasperation from Kilgharrah:

“ _Þurhhæle dolgbenn._ ” Something shivery runs up her palm. Kilgharrah sighs in relief.  “I felt something!” Gwen exclaims. “I did it!”

“Not yet,” says the dragon, eyeing the wound.  It’s still as painful and present as it was a few minutes ago. “Try again, with more force. The first spell always shows the most resistance, you must break this barrier if you are to be successful.”

She takes a break after a bit to give her hand a rest, which she thinks is permanently numb now from all the little shivers the spell causes. The wound remains a wound.

Hours later, when dusk is settling over the trees and Gwen’s main light source has become the little embers in Kilgharrah’s nostrils, something new happens.

“ _Þurhhæle dolgbenn!_ ” she incants, and the tingling rushes from her palm to the edges of the wound, make it itch and hurt like pins and needles at the same time. She yanks her hand back in shock, and stares at the gash. It looks smaller, and more… neat. It had been ragged around the edges.

She looks questioningly at Kilgharrah. “Was that it?”  The dragon has raises his head hopefully from where it was resting on the ground in boredom.

“Leave your hand this time. Let the magic flow.”

It takes two more tries: once to get just the tingling and another to get used to the strange feeling in her leg. Finally, _finally_ , she chants the words one last time and holds her hand steady over her thigh, and watches her skin seal together, leaving only a thin, silvery scar.

“I did it,” she says dumbly, and looks up at Kilgharrah, who rolls his eyes, possibly in congratulations.

Quite suddenly a bone deep weariness hits her, and she has just enough time to say, absurdly, “chickens, before she passes out on the leaves.

~xXx~

In the citadel, Zedon trails three knights behind him like dogs on leashes down into the dungeons. He quite likes dungeons. They remind him of home.

Still, though, they could use some color.

He’s thinking blood red.

Once they get what he deems deep enough into the labyrinth he steps back and wordlessly gestures for the knights to open the gate.

They do so, creaking the rusted thing open and then dragging their prisoner inside, dropping him at the wall. Zedon flips both hands up and the prisoner’s follow, slapping against the wall. Two rusty manacles protrude from the stone and lock around his wrists.

Zedon spares one disdainful snort at the plight of King Arthur, then turns sharply and heads for the entrance, leaving the knights to secure the place.

He has a kingdom to rip apart.


	3. Wolf Teeth and Wild Things

Gwen wakes to something roughly nudging her midsection, and a rough voice growling. The thing pokes her sharply, and she squeaks and scrambles backwards away from a claw as big as her forearm.

“What happened?” she asks blearily, trying to get her bearings.

“It is dawn,” growls Kilgharrah. “You must depart.” Oh, right. The stone and Morgana.

“I don’t remember falling asleep.”

“The magic exhausted you. You fell unconscious directly after managing to finally heal your wound.” Gwen looks excitedly at her leg to see the delightful lack of bloody mess.

“Right,” she says. “Shouldn’t be too hard. Everyone’s asleep.”

“Only in Camelot,” Kilgharrah says. “I contemplated the problem overnight, and the High Shade most likely used an enchantment that works as such: enchant the ruler, and his subjects fall as well.  And you must still avoid soldiers from Halesia as you make your way to Mercia.”

“Sounds good,” Gwen says. _Not really, s_ he thinks. But someone has to do it, and she likes her friends alive, thanks. “You _have_ to stay?”

“The connection between myself and Emrys will not allow me away,” he reiterates. “I shall remain and keep watch. One more thing.”

“What?”

“That dagger. Where did you get it?” Gwen’s hand goes to the knife tucked in her belt.

“Arthur’s room, why?”

“Leave it. It has Emrys’ magic imbued in it, it will only attract attention from the High Shade.”

Gwen can’t get the thing out of her belt fast enough.

“I will keep it, and give it to you on your return. Now go quickly, Lady Guinevere.”

Gwen nods and stands. Points herself in a direction. Kilgharrah rumbles a chuckle deep in his belly and hooks a claw around her to turn her left of where she was going.

“This way to Mercia, my lady.”

“Right. I’ll... I’ll just go then, shall I? Be back before you know it.” Gwen walks a step, and looks back. “Right?”

“Go!” Kilgharrah rumbles, and snorts smoke at her. She yelps and jogs away, and doesn’t look back.

After an hour of walking, nothing has happened. It’s only been an hour, but that seems like an age when you’re walking alone in the woods. In all honestly, Gwen expected terrifying danger and excitement the entire way, so she’s on edge, just waiting.

Something does happen, after another half hour.

She finds a road.

She stands by it, debating. She got a bit lost, what with all the confusion, so she isn’t entirely sure what road it actually is. It’s leading in the direction she’s going, though, and probably through a town.

 _Towns have food and water,_ her mind points out. _Which you don’t._

She follows the road. It’s a nice road, very well packed and defined from years of horses and carts tromping up and down it.

In fact, horses and carts still tromp up and down it, even when everyone in the kingdom is supposed to be asleep, Gwen realizes, when she hears the rattle of a cart coming down the road.

 _Soldiers!_ She thinks desperately, frozen. Then, _hide!_ Gwen leaps off the road and a few paces into a forest and throws herself down behind a log, keeping as quiet and still as is humanly possible.

You may thing that’s a hyperbole right there. If you do, you’ll be surprised to know you’re wrong. In truth, Gwen is quite possibly _literally as quiet and still as is humanly possible_. She’s had lots of practice, you see. There were plenty of things to hide from growing up: bullies and older brothers and, sometimes, invading armies. Quite surprisingly, she got extremely good at it. Several times Gwen had been mistaken by ill-intentioned knights and raiders for a rock, and, once, a donkey’s rear end.

Later in her days at the castle, Gwen had used her finely honed skill for other purposes: eavesdropping, though she preferred the term “information-gathering”. It was how she kept track of Morgana, though she didn’t know why she bothered.

So Gwen is very, very quiet and still until the cart goes by, and it’s a good thing she is, too, because she hears at least three different voices coming from it, and if they’re awake it is certain they aren’t friendly voices.

From then on Gwen stays in the woods: in sight of the path to mark her direction, but far enough away to hide from soldiers quickly if need be. Her skills are put to use twice more until she reaches a town a few hours later, just as the sun begins to get hot.

The place is small, but she can see horses and soldiers from the edge of the woods. It takes a while to creep towards an outlying house, mostly because it takes a complex series of athletic moves to avoid the knights, including rolling and jumping from hiding place to hiding place. Eventually she makes it and scrambles in a window.

Safe.  Now if she can gather supplies quickly and get out of here, she’ll be good to go. She mentally shrugs off a twinge of guilt as she opens the cupboard; which is worse, stealing some food or letting Camelot be destroyed? She grabs bread and cheese, a few dried strips of meat.  A drawstring bag is taken from the end of a bed to hold everything, and she slings it over her back. Perfect.

The hurry back out to the woods is eventless, and she walks the rest of the day in the forest along the road, nibbling on her pilfered food when hunger makes itself known.

It is exceedingly boring, Gwen feels, and secretly wishes for soldiers or _something._ When that fails to occur in the next five minutes, she gazes into the forest around her as she walks and picks out imaginary shapes among the bracken.  A rock, shaped vaguely like a dog. A pattern of leaves that, at a stretch, could be a bird in flight. Merlin in the clouds, Arthur in the dirt, Morgana in the bark of a tree. A tree bent into a human-like shape.

 _Wait_ , Gwen thinks, stopping and starting. A tree in a suspiciously human-like shape. She can maybe make out muscles and a face and everything. She blinks, and it’s gone. Unnerved, she resumes walking.

Three more times something of this sort happens; a rock face that looks like an old, weary man, another tree, and a bush that’s branches are bent and twisted, and she almost sees a girl with hooves.

After this she stops looking and starts deliberately _not_ looking.

Gwen doesn’t know this, but she’s not seeing rocks and trees and bushes. She’s seeing dryads and spirits and fae. When she used magic, you see, to heal her leg, she opened a door. She accepted magic, and along with it magical things and beings, the whole package. She’s seeing things now as they truly are, for the first time. 

And now she has something to occupy her (not looking), the time flies by, until she’s walking through dusk. She’s near a small village, she can see it through the trees, but she decides to sleep in the forest. Less chance of being discovered awake.

“Not a bad bit of progress for a day’s walking,” she murmurs as she kicks some leaves into a bed-ish pile. Talking to herself is a habit she’d gotten into as a child and hadn’t quite grown out of.  “Night, forest. Night… bag. Night, glowing eyes.”  Gwen buries herself in the leaves and refuses to open her eyes again.

A few hours into the night, a low growling urges Gwen to wake, and then to stay as still and quiet as humanly possible. Which we know she’s good at. Except this time, it won’t help her much. She slowly cracks one eye open to see, a few feet away from her, a growling grey-flecked muzzle, attached to a rather large wolf, six more yellow eyes behind it.

In the span of a few seconds, Gwen panics. Several things fire rapidly through her brain. Among them are _wolf, death, oh god, help,_ and also, more productively, _town, food, and run._

Directly after this last synapse fires, in a stroke of waking, drowsy-yet-adrenaline-fueled genius that most could not have been able to pull off (although, funnily enough, Derek the guard numbered among the few who could have), Gwen leaps up, startling the wolves back a few paces, and flings her pack at them.

The wolves lurch comically in their rush for Gwen when the dried meat spills out of the pack and they fall on it instead.  It is important to note that this trick would not usually work, but these particular wolves are getting on in years and aren’t really up for a chase.

Gwen doesn’t know any of this, however, as she is already on the edges of the little town she had been camping outside of, life still flashing before her eyes.

Whispering a mantra quietly to herself of “ _Oh god, oh god, oh god,”_ she trips towards the nearest soft thing- a large hay bale- and buries herself inside it.  It is warm and soft, and she sleeps the rest of the night in peace.

~xXx~

Kilgharrah flies high enough to be mistaken for a bird, but not so high that he can’t keep the castle in his sight. The lights are on but the city around is ominously, unnaturally quiet, but for the distressed calls of various animals. The air smells like bad magic and carries a particular heaviness about it, saturated with what the Great Dragon has come to know as evil that would fight the claw of destiny.

He roars out flame angrily, and whoever is watching from below only sees a brief flash of lightning. It is not lightning. It is rage.

~xXx~

In the Kings- former King’s, now- chambers, Zedon watches the form on the bed. Such a puny form for such immense power.

Well. The form will not be puny for long. In fact, it will not even be a form for long.

Emrys will die, and Camelot will fall.

~xXx~

 _It’s nice,_ Gwen thinks, _to wake up without immediate cause to panic._ She isn’t going to take a good, _safe_ night’s rest for granted again. No more sleeping in the woods for this girl.

 _I should probably find out where I am,_ she muses. _And get out of this hay without attracting any attention_. She shimmies to the top of the pile, carefully pushing straw aside to peek out. The street is empty, at least for now. Quickly, she stumbles out of her makeshift bed and hops over to the wall it was resting against, peeking around the corner.

Deserted.

A window is open beside her; she takes the opportunity to heave herself through it and replenish her food and grab another bag. She is sure the first is ripped to shreds in the forest somewhere.

Relaxing at the apparent emptiness of the place, Gwen strolls easily down the street and around the corner.

“-gone an’ plan’ed flowers. Flowers, can yah believe et?”

“Flowers in the corn field? Idiot.”

Gwen reels back around and throws herself through the nearest opening (a doorway), huddling up inside from the two soldiers who were coming down the street towards her.

(She stays very still and quiet.)

 _This is getting ridiculous!_ She thinks. _And I can’t let my guard down like that anymore. I could be killed!_ She shifts, and comes face to face with a man, eyes closed and mouth slack. She  screams, but claps a hand to her mouth as she does it, stifling the noise.

“Oh, ‘an did ya hear?” one voice says in a sloppy accent. “’At witch, ya know, them at Camelot’s one?”

“Morgana,” supplies a deeper voice. Gwen perks up at the name and listens hard while scrambling desperately back from the snoozing man.

“Yah, ‘at’s the one. Well, I ‘eard ‘at she went an’ got ‘erslf cap’erd.”

“No. She’s too mean!”

“God’s ‘onest truth! ‘Eard it from a trader ‘oo was there.” She bumps into something soft while scooting back and freezes, looking around slowly. A woman, who apparently sleeps with her eyes open.

“I’ll be.” The voices start to fade. Gwen desperately scrambles away from the woman and to the window after them. “Where they got her?”

“Halesia,” says the first soldier. “Locked up real tight. An’ did I tell ‘oo ‘bout my mum’s pum’kins?”

“About the worms…” and then the voices really do fade.

Gwen reels out of the house as fast as she can manage, then slumps on the ground against a wall and squeezes her eyes shut. Morgana’s in Halesia now? _Really_? Halesia, where the people currently attacking Camelot are from. And it was so much farther than Mercia. She had been nearly there! _Damn!_ She throws a rock at the house she just came out of, and hopes it hits one of the people. That was terrifying.

 _Nothing to do but press on, then,_ the tougher part of Gwen informs her. _And can you really leave Morgana captured in enemy (evil) territory?_

“Whatever,” Gwen mutters, and wonders if she could somehow contact Kilgharrah and tell him about the development. She quickly concludes that short of magic, which she doesn’t have, she can’t.

Guinevere sighs and sets off, careful to avoid running into more soldiers.

It is Friday, now, and Camelot has been under attack for three days. Gwen tries not to dwell on this, or worry for her friends (Merlin, Arthur, Leon, oh god…) because that never got anyone anywhere.

 

 


	4. Steep Drops and Sieged Dreams

“Why is it not working?” Zedon asks the captain of Abernard’s forces through clenched teeth. Honestly, he should wipe the earth of this miserable excuse for a soldier here and now.

“I-it just isn’t!” the thing stutters. “We’ve tried hacking his head off, then limbs, and stabbing through the heart, and nothing is working!” The man looks positively terrified of the prospect.

Zedon strides over to the bed and examines it. Emrys’ clothes are torn and so is the mattress around him, but the sorcerer still lives.

Zedon conjures up a blade in his hand, takes careful aim, and plunges it into Emrys’ chest. He feels the knife go in, and the body on the bed twitches. He tosses the knife aside and inspects his work. The shirt is torn, but when he moves it aside, the boy’s skin is unharmed.

Zedon scowls fiercely, stretches his magic, and prepares for battle.

~xXx~

Gwen wakes up hot, and itchy.

 _Odd,_ she thinks. _Hasn’t been like this before._ Usually the hay is pleasantly warm, not truly hot.

She pokes her head up and is met with piercing light that lances straight through her eyes and into her brain. She ducks her head back down quickly.

 _Noon! I overslept!_ Gwen is used to waking at dawn for the hustle and bustle of the castle, but for some reason she hadn’t today. Maybe it was the extra couple of hours she spent looking for the hay in the first place. (Side note; it was.)

 _I’ve got to get going!_ She scrambles out of the pile and crouches next to it, peering around a corner. Empty. She runs.

“Halt!” Not so empty, then.

She doesn’t halt, doesn’t look back at whoever is making those thundering footsteps behind her. Two sets now. Three. She stumbles, whimpers, and runs faster, a steady _Whirrrr!_ rushing through her head.

Gwen sprints harder, edge of the woods in sight. Breath tears painfully up her throat, and she trips over perhaps every tree root and stone in her path.

A few more seconds to the trees- just a few, she can see the leaves now-

Something clatters to her left. A sword. Thrown. And now something stings in her arm. Another bee?... or had that sword…

She looks down and shrieks. The sting suddenly turns to fire, as red as the blood now covering her arm. 

She reaches the trees, but the soldiers come after her.

“Þurhhæle dolgbenn,” she gasps, holding an unsteady hand over the wound. Nothing. Not even a tingle. She fumbles the words out over and over as she runs, trying to pronounce it right and hold her hand steady and run at the same time. (And ignore the bloodpainfire that’s eating her body).

Then she _does_ feel the tingling and stops quickly, standing as still (not as quiet, though, her breathing’s too loud for that) as she can. It takes; the wound seals up.  It doesn’t look as good as her leg did: the skin is thin and fragile-looking, like glass crinkled up, and it aches like anything.

But no time to try again now, it has to be good enough. The soldiers are closer, a whole horde of them behind her. Gwen runs again, each step jogging her arm painfully.

The next few minutes are chase-and-run, stumbling over rocks and cutting herself on thorn branches.

By the time she catches herself just in time to avoid running straight off the edge of a ravine, she feels like a mass of cat scratches and bee stings.

Ah. The ravine. Cliff of doom seems more appropriate to Gwen. It opens in front of her, the way down edged with sharp rock teeth and menacing bracken. A river at the bottom mocks her.

The soldiers are here, now. _Thump, thump, thud_ are their feet as they too stop in the face of the mouth.

Gwen looks at them, eyes jumping frantically (she thinks one is twitching), and they stare coldly at her.

“I d-don’t suppose you would consider moving aside for j-just a moment?” she asks. One man snorts and it reminds her, randomly and stupidly, of Kilgharrah.

“You are under arrest for trespassing in the claimed lands of King Abernard, and will be put to death in due time. Step away from the edge.”

“Now, stop for a moment-” Gwen tries, but a soldier steps forward menacingly and she automatically steps back.

Back onto air, and the rest of her body follows. She gives a strangled shout as she falls and then goes silent as she hits the first rocks. There is no way to know what she’s thinking, because she isn’t thinking anything.

The soldiers watch as the body of the girl tumbles like a ragdoll down the cliff, eventually rolling to a rest beside the river.

After a moment, the leader says in a voice that clearly means he’s attempting to un-see what just happened.

“Well, that’s that done. Back to the town, we’ve got things to do.”

The rest of the soldiers follow him in stunned, horrified silence, and, later, will drown this memory in enough ale to knock out a horse. (A lot of ale, for those who aren’t familiar with this unit of measurement).

And all night a small, battered body will lay limply by the river.

~xXx~

Kilgharrah’s mind is under assault, or at least second-hand assault. Linked as he is to his Dragonlord, in the boy’s unconscious state Kilgharrah is receiving what is happening inside his mind during periods of great distress.

He soars loops over the castle, still high in the air, and sees great bursts of convoluted magic expel from a window. It’s killing magic, and he growls and breathes smoke as he turns.

~xXx~

Merlin is asleep, but the sleep is anything but restful. Explosions of black force batter his subconscious from all sides, and he curls into a ball into (metaphorically), and erects what shields he can. The magic keeps coming, meant to kill but somehow not working, for which he’s grateful.

He doesn’t know what is happening, but he knows it’s bad. He thinks (dreams) of Arthur.

 

 


	5. Magic Orbs and Midnight Snacks

Gwen wakes up aching all over, and with the confusion that comes from not being dead when you are convinced that you should be. Her first word of the morning is something like this:

“Urrgaaargarl.”

The noise sounds distinctly alive, but not very coherent. Groaning and moaning, and making generic painful noises, she pushes herself up into a sitting position from where she was lying on her back. Looks around.

She is by a river, at the bottom of a ravine. No, not _a_ ravine. _The_ ravine. The one she fell down. She remembers slipping and something snapping sickeningly as she hit rocks from a terrifying drop, but nothing after that.

The grass she was lying in is covered in dried blood. She pats herself down frantically. Gashes, broken bones, gore? No… only bruises and cuts. She winces as she presses them as she checks herself over, but she supposes that means she’s not dead. Which begs the question: how?

 _Maybe I am dead,_ she thinks. _Can you be thirsty if you’re dead?_ She decides there’s a fifty percent chance of being dead, and crawls over to the stream regardless. She closes her eyes and splashes water on her face, then drinks a few handfuls. When she opens her eyes, there is a face in the water, and it’s not her reflection.

She screams and scrambles back, and a ball of blue light rises a few inches above the bank. An ethereal face is wavering inside.

“H-hello?” Gwen says, looking about for some kind of weapon. Could she pop the bubble, perhaps?

“Calm, Lady Guinevere,” says the orb. “We mean you no harm. Why would we heal you only to undo our work?” Gwen stops looking for a sharp stick and starts listening.

“You healed me? Who are you?”

“We are the vilia,” says the sphere. At the plural, Gwen realizes there are more orbs rising from the water. “You fell to our side, broken and near death, and your magic called to us.”

“What magic?”

“You have used magic, and so the veil that you were hidden behind has lifted. You became visible to us, just as us to you.”

“Oh,” Gwen says. “Thank you for healing me.”

“We could not restore you entirely,” the face says serenely. But Gwen doesn’t care. She’s very happy with just being alive, thank you very much.

Gwen sits and looks at them for a few minutes, and, when it appears they aren’t going to crack first, speaks.

“I fell down the cliff after some soldiers chased me. Camelot’s been put to sleep by a High Shade, so I have to go and get a rock and take it to a dragon. In case you were wondering.”

The face doesn’t change in expression, it doesn’t appear to _have_ other expressions, but it does speak, finally.

“A High Shade is a difficult thing to defeat.”

“It is,” Gwen agrees. “At least, according to Kilgharrah. Almost more trouble than it’s worth. I’ve got to go all the way to Halesia.”

“Political borders mean little to us. It is far?”

“Yes, a few more days that way.” Gwen points right, down the river. She sits in slightly awkward silence for a few minutes while the vilia stares at her, feeling more and me uncomfortable.

“We can assist you,” it says finally.

“That’s great!” Gwen enthuses. “How?”

“My sisters will bring a boat, and we will speed your travel down the river towards this place. You will be safe with us surrounding you.”

“Thank you very much,” Gwen says, and, because she feels like she should do something else to be polite, bows where she’s sitting. The orb seems to twinkle at her- like a wink or a nod- and then sinks back into the water. The others follow.

They don’t seem to be coming back very soon, so Gwen takes stock of herself. Bruises and cuts from the rocks, but, miraculously, nothing else. Her arm is pretty much the same, but seems a tad more substantial- but that could just be wishful thinking. Her clothes are pretty ripped up- not tatters yet but getting there.

The food is there too- inside the ripped pack the bread is smashed in and the berries are crushed, but everything seems edible. She eats the berries to be sure.

She washes the dried blood mostly off of herself, hoping it won’t bother the vilia. If she had a needle and thread she would mend the clothes, but the closest she can find is some grass and a thin sliver of rock.

After an hour of sitting (to Gwen it feels like five) the water starts to bubble. Gwen peers over, but nothing happens, just more bubbles.

For ten minutes she waits for something to happen, then lies back and dozes in the sun. _It’s good to be alive._

Three hours later she’s awoken by a splash of cold water on her face. She sits up, spluttering, and glares at the vilia hovering over the water. It looks back innocently.

“We have the boat,” it says. Gwen looks, and, sure enough, a solid-looking rowboat is bobbing by the bank, held in place against the current.

“There aren’t any oars,” she points out.

“We will carry the vessel,” says the vilia. “But we can only take you so far. A dam blocks the river, and we cannot carry the craft across it.”

“That’s fine, great,” Gwen says, because she couldn’t have hoped for more. It’s quicker than walking, at any rate.

“And take these,” says the orb. Gwen holds her hand low over the water and the vilia floats gently onto it, settling for a brief second. It feels like a raindrop. When it moves away there are five leaves in her hand.  “The red one will call our sisters to you,” says the vilia, “Should you have need, drop it in the water. The others have healing properties. Chew them and spread them on a wound.”

“Thank you,” Gwen says, surprised.

“You’re quest is great,” says the vilia. “And your magic is enticing.” Gwen decides not to think too hard about that one.  She thanks the orbs again instead, and steps unsteadily into the boat. The vilia sink under the water, and the boat begins to move swiftly downstream. She peers over the edge and sees ripples of glowing blue making wavy patterns in the water.

Then there is nothing to do but sit, and rest, and be carried.

When she is awoken again by a splash of cool water, it is nightfall. She looks around blearily and sees that the boat has been pushed up to a bank, and in front of them is a wall of sticks and dirt. A beaver’s dam.

The vilia float up out of the water.

“This is as far as we are able to take you.”

“Thank you for your help,” Gwen says politely. She steps out and the boat starts to move back upstream, and disappears around a bend. Now, to find out where she is. She checks that she has the leaves the vilia gave her and walks further along the river, looking for a town.

A few minutes later, she finds a man. She gasps and freezes as he comes into view, but he doesn’t look like a soldier. He looks like a fisherman. He’s fishing. Which must mean… it must mean she’s crossed Camelot’s border into Mercia, and people are awake!

Gwen laughs in relief: no more dead-looking people and deserted towns.

“Pardon me,” she calls, walking happily up to him. “Where’s the nearest village or town?” He stares at her, old eyes taking in the torn clothes and battered skin.

“Yah look lahke someone who shouldn’ be alahve,” he says in a thick accent, heavy breathing adding “ah’s” to his words.

“Probably,” Gwen agrees. “Oh, and where am I?” He gives her a shrewd look, and apparently deems her worthy.

“Mercia,” he says heavily. “”Bout ah day ahway frahm  ‘Ahlesia. Neahrest tahwn’s thaht wahy, fahve minahts. Gud dahy.”

“Good day,” Gwen replies to his back, and deciphers his words in her head. A day from Halesia, which means two days from the castle, where Morgana probably is. She walks where the man pointed, and comes to the town soon enough.

It’s dark, dark enough that most people are inside, sleeping.

 _It’s odd,_ she thinks, as she pilfers a new tunic and pants from a pile of washing, _how much more guilty I feel stealing from actual sleeping people instead of enchanted sleeping ones._

More real, she supposes. In any case she doesn’t feel guilty enough to _not_ steal them, and she leaves the old ones in place. Whoever’s washing it is might be able to scrub out the blood and sew up the holes.

 She’s searching for that night’s hay bale when she hears it. A sort of buzz.

“Bzst!”

She turns around slowly, and spots a wrinkled old woman peering at her from a doorway. The woman makes the noise again.

“ _Bzst_!” Gwen works out that she’s trying to whisper “Psst!”, and walks warily over.

“Ye want some dinner, laddie?” the woman asks, who is even more wrinkled up close, and missing a few teeth.

“Sorry?”

“Ah, ye’re not a lad,” says the crone. “Jest the clothes of one. M’name’s Laura.  D’yeh wan’ some dinner, then?”

 _Something other than dried meat and bread would be nice,_ Gwen’s stomach says. _But it might not be safe!_ protests her brain.

Gwen decides there’s no harm in checking.

“Sorry,” she says again, “But are you planning to kill me somehow or call the soldiers if I come in? Because if you are, I’m afraid I’ll have to decline.” Laura sort of cackles under her breath.

“I knew ye were interestin’,” she says. “Come on in, I’ve got stew cooking.”

“You didn’t answer the question,” Gwen objects uselessly as Laura drags her inside and pushes her onto a bench at a table.

The little house is a mess. Dishes are piled on several tables, melted candle stubs are everywhere, anchored by dripped wax puddles on the wood. Drying plants and jars that have what looks like mold in them hang from the rafters. Books are heaped in the corners, and clutter covers every other available surface.

Gwen picks up a tome by her feet. _2 nd Edition Bable’s Gyde to the Propertyes of Fungus. _She opens it to a page in the middle, an entry on parsley, of all things.

 _Used with Gryffon claw,_ it reads, _creates a handy memory blocke. Use with caution._

“Are you a sorceress?” she asks Laura, who is spooning a thick stew into a wooden bowl.

“Who wants to know?” Laura says suspiciously.

“Oh, I’m not,” Gwen flounders, “I mean, I won’t…”

“Ah’m only messing with ye,” Laura says, and plunks the bowl down with a large spoon in front of Gwen. “Aye, I’m a witch. Prefer that term, if it’s all the same to ye. Same thing, only I specialize in fungus and such like. More witchy, I think. Now, tell me about whatever it is yer doin’. I could use a good story.”

Gwen judges her trustworthy, if the stew is anything to go by (Gwen inhaled it), and Laura listens silently and intently as Gwen describes her quest thus far, interrupting only once to offer Gwen a cup of fresh goat’s milk.

It feels good to talk to another person; Gwen can’t have said more than a few sentences since leaving Kilgharrah.

“That’s quite a story ye have, lass,” Laura says when Gwen has talked herself out. “Do ye know where this witch of yers is?”

“In the dungeons, probably,” Gwen says glumly.

“Those dungeons are big. Big ‘an dark. Gonna need a sure-fire way to find ‘er.” Laura gets up stiffly from where she was sitting across from Gwen and moves creakily to a pile of books.

She comes back with a volume bound in red, and drops it on the table with a _thunk_ and a cloud of dust.

“Was always one for plants and things, meself,” Laura says as she flips through the pages, “But that doesn’ mean ah don’t know a thing or two about spelling. The magic kind, mind ye, not the which-letters-go-where kind. Here we go.” She stops triumphantly on a page. Gwen peers at the loopy writing.

_Locating Spelles: Sub Category- Objectes_

“It’s a spell,” Laura points out, “Te help ye find her. Ye just need an object ‘o hers, ‘an it’ll lead ye to her.”

Gwen things on this for a moment. She doesn’t have anything of Morgana’s… wait! The bracelet- technically it was Morgana’s before she gave it to Gwen. It’ll probably work.

“I’ve got this,” she tells Laura, holding up the bracelet. “It has spells on it already, though.”

“It won’ matter.”

“Alright, then.”

“What ye do is- no keep the bracelet on!- what ye do is this,” Laura makes a figure eight gesture in the  air, “Over the bracelet.” Gwen copies it. “Good,” Laura says. “Simple. Now the words: _Ábeþecest þæs ágan_.”

“Abest par agen,” tries Gwen. _Here we go again._

Three hours later the bracelet glows briefly too hot on her wrist and returns to normal.

“Ye’ve done it!” Laura says, slapping her on the back. “Good for ye. Now, when yer headin’ closer to the witch, it’ll get hotter. When ye reach her, touch her and the spell will end.”

“Thank you!” Gwen says. “It’ll be so much easier now.” She yawns widely, and feels herself droop.

“Aye, dun thank me, jest save yer home. Ye can sleep on me bed. Ah’m mostly nocturnal, anyway. Off ye go.”

Gwen lies gratefully on her first real mattress in days, and is asleep in seconds.


	6. Fixed Bones and Famous Stones

Zedon gives a furious shout and throws down the bottle. The mattress around Emrys is burned and the frame corroded, but Emrys will not fall to poison.

“Keep trying,” he snarls at two knights in the room. “I need rest.”

They nod stoically and draw their swords. Zedon snorts. It won’t work, but it is something, at least. Perhaps whatever magic holds Emrys intact will break.

~xXx~

Lass, up ye get, it’s jest after dawn.”  Gwen stirs, mumbles a protest, and burrows back into the mattress.

“Soldiers are coming!”

Gwen falls out of the bed with the speed of her waking, then rights herself and glares at Laura.

“What?”

“Ye’ve got to be off,” the old woman says. “If ye want te find yer witch in time.”

“Right,” Gwen says, rubbing her eyes. “Thank you so much for everything, Laura. Honestly.”

“It wasn any hardship,” Laura says. “Now here’s yer pack, I gave ye some leftover meat ah had frahm the stew.”

“I wish there was some way I could repay you,” Gwen says regretfully, standing by the door.

“Ah don’ need anything,” Laura tells her, “Ah’m perfectly content with ma fungus. Off ye go, now.”

Gwen starts to open the door, then has a brilliant idea.

“Wait!” She digs in her bag and pulls out the blue leaves. “Take one of these!” She presses on long plant into Laura’s hands. “The vilia gave it to me. They said if you chew it up it makes a healing paste.”

Laura stares at the token, speechless.

“The vilia, lass?”

Gwen nods and Laura seems to think she’s discovered the fount of youth.

“Lass, do ye… can ye even… the _value_ , the potential. Ye’ll likely never see anything af this sort again, lass. Are ye sure?”

“I’m not much for herbs,” Gwen says. “And I’ve got more. It’s the least I could do. Maybe you could do something with it, invent something.”

“It isn’t the least, but thank ye all the same. Ah’ll try, lass. Now get going, and luck to ye.”

“Thank you!” calls Gwen once again, out the door. 

There aren’t any Halesian soldiers in Mercian towns, so the walk to the road and then into the forest beside it is quiet and uneventful.

In fact, the first half of the day is quiet and uneventful.

The silence and boredom is broken around noon by one unassuming tree root, of all things.

Up until now the tree to which this root belonged had been growing happily; not exactly noticed, but it felt it was fulfilling its purpose in life rather well: giving shade, producing oxygen… it even has a robin’s nest in a top branch. It has never thought of itself as being particularly obtrusive.

If it could understand Gwen (which it can’t because Gwen is speaking English, not Tree), it would seriously reconsider its life thus far.

Here is what happens, blow-by-blow: Gwen, momentarily distracted by a bird- a merlin, actually- shrieking overhead, looks up. This means that she fails to take note of the root of the aforementioned tree, which sneaks up and grabs her foot, sending her face first into the dirt.

She comes up spitting- curses _and_ dirt.  Then she twists her foot upright where she sits, and whimpers a little. She yanks off her left boot and stares in dismay at ankle. Pokes it. Hisses.

Flops back on the ground and groans in exasperation.

“Right,” she says, sitting back up. Felled by a twisted ankle- not a chance.

She holds her hand over her ankle, determination filling her. She _can_ do this. Deep breath…

“Þurhhæle dolgbenn,” she orders, staring hard at her ankle. She waits for a few seconds. Maybe it’ll take…

…or not.

She spends five minutes alternating between shouting the words and whispering them at her ankle, to no avail.

“Fine,” she finally mutters. It should be noted at this point that Gwen is a talkative person, so, in times such as these, she provides herself with company.  “I’ll just sit here until some Halesian soldiers pick me up and chop off my head, I’m almost to the border anyway…”

She glares at the appendage some more. Then: “Of course!” Gwen smacks her forehead and pulls out one of the blue leaves from her pack.

She looks at it suspiciously. It does not look back.

“Here goes.”

Gwen grimaces at first; the leaf tastes like sour dirt. But then it changes- it gets even worse. Gwen gags it out onto her hand and spits a few times.

She contemplates the mush in her palm, which refuses to look apologetic. It looks chewed enough, though, and she wants to put it back in her mouth slightly less than she wants to wrestle a bear, so she smears the stuff on her ankle.

 _This had better work,_ she thinks. She wouldn’t trust the stuff to heal a broken bone, but a twisted ankle might be okay. The vilia hadn’t told her how it worked, anyway.

After a few minutes it starts to tingle and Gwen relaxes at the sign of _something_ happening. In a few more seconds, her foot goes numb and she starts to think it was a bad idea.

She’ll have to wait it out, she decides. No use walking on a foot you can’t feel. She eases her boot back on and crab-walks to the edge of the forest near the road. Maybe a traveler will come by that she can hitch a ride with. She is very close to the Mercian-Halesian border now. On foot she can be there tomorrow afternoon.

The clatter of wheels rouses her from her thoughts. She raisers her head and peers down the road. Traveler? No. Soldiers.

Soldiers with a small wagon, pulled by two horses.

As it passes by, Gwen can see that the back is open, filled with sacks of something and stacks of wood, but no other soldiers.

Here is what Gwen does (rather impulsively, but the whole ankle mishap has made her irritable):

As the cart passes on, she very quietly, even though she can’t feel her foot, runs to the edge of the woods and rolls, turtle-like, onto the road and behind the wagon. She runs at a crouch along behind it and, when it bumps over a rocky patch, hops inside, bracing herself against a sack of grain.

Grinning in triumph, Gwen settles back among the clutter, hidden rather well, and puts her foot up to finish whatever’s happening to it.

For the rest of the day, and into the night, Gwen practices being still and quiet. She is so still and quiet that she tricks herself into a still and quiet (and very restful) sleep.

~xXx~

While Gwen sleeps, so does the whole of Camelot, though in a much less natural way.

Kilgharrah, too, grows weary. The Lady Guinevere must have encountered undue complications, or, perhaps, she was dead. But no, he would feel it if she was. Just as he would feel it if Emrys or King Arthur died. Destiny would bleed.

He circles down to a cliff that is far from the city, but keeps his far-seeing eyes trained on the citadel. He allows himself, for a small time, to rest.

~xXx~

Gwen is jostled awake by the cart bumping a bit, and someone shouting coming from outside.

She moves her foot experimentally- no pain, no numbness. It worked! _And,_ thinks Gwen to herself, _with no unexpected consequences._

At least, she thinks this until she moves to a crouch, and an odd feeling fills her ankle. She rubs a hand over it. Probably just getting used to being healed, or something. She shakes it a bit and peers out the back.

The world around her has changed. Gone is the forest and dirt road. In their place is stone: grey and everywhere. The houses and walls and road blend together in the color, making the whole place look like a dusty puddle.

Gwen shakes her head to clear the sudden vertigo this wash of monotone has given her, grabs her pack, and jumps out of the cart. She rolls a bit then scurries to the wall. Her healed ankle off-balances her, the one foot sort of thumping.

The grey of everything is blinding- she desperately needs to get her bearings. She hobbles over to a little alcove in the wall and huddles into it, closing her eyes for a moment.

 _Okay,_ she thinks. _I’m in Halesia. Probably the city around the castle, judging by all the rock._

Halesia, she had learned from overheard (eavesdropped) meetings in Camelot, had a great deal of whatever type of stone was surrounding her. She can’t remember the name. Granite? No... ah well. In any case, the castle and its surrounding city are famous, or at least well known, for being composed almost entirely of it.

Gwen had heard it was beautiful. In person, it seems drab and overwhelming.

She opens her eyes and looks around, ready this time for the bleakness. She’s in an alley or side-street, and there are doors lining the road, evenly spaced. No one’s around, though. The sun is just dusting the edges of the sky with pink. She slept through the afternoon, then, and into the next morning. The cart had taken her all the way to the castle!

And the bracelet on her arm is faintly warm. She moves her hand experimentally in front of her. As she points left, the heat increases minutely. Gwen grins. Time to find a witch.

She stands, wobbles, and frowns at her ankle. It isn’t numb, it doesn’t hurt, it just feels… heavier. She stomps it a few times on the ground. Feels solid. She takes a few steps, then paces in circles to get used to it.

Compared to the other ankle, Gwen finds, it _is_ different. More solid, like she said, but somehow more _there._ It sort of has a presence. Well, as much a presences as an ankle can have.

She stops pacing suddenly as she realizes.

The leaves that healed it… must have _really_ healed it. Maybe even overcorrected. Undone whatever wear and tear had accumulated from years of use, and so it ended up stronger than the other.

In fact, Gwen thinks, contemplating the joint, it may even be the strongest ankle in the world at this time.

(It isn’t. It is, however, the strongest _human_ ankle to exist for another century or so.)

She takes a few minutes to get used to it then sets off in the direction her bracelet is suggesting.

She walks (limps, really) along an endless maze of stone as the sun comes up. It’s a beautiful sunrise- almost as if the sky is celebrating Gwen making it this far. Making it to the stone kingdom.

And this is what happens to said stone kingdom in the morning, as Gwen discovers:

As the sun rises, the stone changes. The oppressive color of the early hours shifts before Gwen’s eyes, and explodes into a plethora of shades, dark and light and hundreds in between.  The walls and buildings become an intricate quilt of subtle colors, and Gwen realizes why the city is called beautiful.

She tries to appear inconspicuous as an hour passes, and early risers open their shop doors and enjoy the morning air. Her attempts work, for the most part. One young carpenter eyes her limp for a moment, then goes back to his rocking chair.

The city is fully awake when she reaches the castle, which somehow glitters grey under the sun.

Gwen stands in the shadows of an alley and contemplates the castle. It’s square and solid-looking, very much like the one in Camelot. She suspects the inside is similar, as well. Most castles are of the same stock, she’s found.

It’s stone, with big steps and double doors at the entrance. Beyond that: towers, flags, turrets, and stained glass windows that contrast beautifully with the sparkle of the stone.

How to get in, that’s what she needs to figure out. Into the castle and then… most likely the dungeons. Wherever the bracelet leads her.

Sticking in-between alleys and close to walls, she walks around the castle. There is a high wall surrounding it, with a gate on all four sides, each guarded. The shops and houses of the upper town spawn from there, spreading away in a roughly checkerboard pattern.

The overall effect is very square, and very secure.

Completing her circuit, Gwen sits dejectedly on an empty crate beside a fruit vendor. How on earth is she going to get in? She sighs. Her ankle throbs.

A boy pulling a cart full of burlap sacks trots up to the gate she’s watching. One of the guards pokes at the bags for a moment, then raises the entrance. The boy jogs inside, and Gwen stands up.

An idea breaks the surface of her brain, insisting that she act now or she’ll lose the chance. She chooses to act.

She looks quickly around, and grabs a sack of apples from a fruit seller (who’s handing over some oranges to a woman in a shawl) and dashes up to the guards who’re lowering the gate.

“Wait!” she says, hefting the fruit. “He dropped this one.” The man doesn’t even bother looking through the bag, just rolls his eyes, sighs, and winches up the gate.

Gwen slips through and walks after the boy like she’s doing nothing out of the ordinary.

As she keeps up her purposeful stride, in her mind she skips in a circle and claps her hands in congratulations to herself. A man carrying two bags of grain gives her an odd look, so she ceases the internal celebration.

 _Delivery entrances,_ she thinks, as the boy unknowingly leads her into a storage room connected to the kitchen. _Greatest things in the world._

 

 


	7. Dark Cells and Dim Guards

The boy stops suddenly and starts unloading sacks onto a shelf. He pauses when he sees her and raises his eyebrows expectantly.

“Er… hi!” Gwen says. _Act normal. You are a perfectly ordinary servant, doing nothing suspicious._ She holds the bag out to him.“These fell off.”

“Thanks.” He takes them. Gwen nods and smiles and walks into the kitchen, not expecting the cooks and servants to stop what they were doing and stare at her.

She glances down at herself and sees the problem: boy’s clothes, too big, torn and dirty, muddy boots, and she’s sure her face is scratched up. She can’t even imagine what state her hair must be in. (It looks like something’s nest).

“I’m new,” she says, smiling nervously. They stare at her more. “Got to dash. See you all later.” She follows the bracelet (discreetly) out the door opposite to her and finds herself at an intersection. Torches flicker along the walls in lieu of windows, and it is deserted.

Now, she’s in the castle, how to do this…  She closes her eyes and focuses on the bracelet as she turns in a slow circle. The heat increases at one point, so she heads that way, left.

She walks quickly- and falls on her butt when she runs smack into a wall.

“Ow,” she groans, holding her nose. “Eyes open, then.” _Good thing the corridor was deserted._

Abashed, she starts again, this time walking properly down the corridor. She walks for ten minutes, and each second the bracelet becomes just a fraction warmer, until she passes someone. It’s only a guard, and he pays her no mind, despite her appearance. He must have assumed she had some reason to be here. Even so, she sticks closer to the walls (as if that will help) and peers around corners before walking stepping out.

Just as she begins to descend a flight of stairs, a voice comes from a room behind her.

“Ah, Zedon,” a deep voice murmurs, “All goes well, I hope?”

“Yes, my king,” replies a voice that sounds awfully familiar, in a way that Gwen associates with death-eyes and spells. Gwen decides rapidly to eavesdrop. She shuffles as silently as she can to the door that the voices are coming from, and squints into the crack at the side.

A man in a black cloak and embossed clothes is shifting from foot to foot in front of a cloud. Upon closer inspection the cloud resembles the shape of a man, but only barely.

_The king. King Abernard! And the mist… the High Shade!_

“The kingdom sleeps,” says the Shade. “But Emrys will not die.” Gwen pales. What?

“What?” barks the king, echoing Gwen’s thoughts. “He is a man, is he not?”

“Indeed.” The shadowy figure inclines its head. “But he will not die. I have tried myself, along with others, many times over. Fire, water, sword, poison, spells… all would kill another, yet he lives. Some deep magic protects this Emrys.”

“Continue your attempts! That man must be dead before we can fully take Camelot. He is its greatest defense.”

“Yes. And soldiers are watching him every minute. Others are raiding the treasury.”

“Ah,” the king rubs his hands together. “What news there?” The Shade begins to speak again, and Gwen loses interest. She turns and starts back down the stairs.

She momentarily forgets, however, about her ankle, and steps down with that foot first.

She overbalances and tumbles down the stairs, coming to a bumpy, noisy halt in a heap at the bottom. The king skids out the doorway and catches sight of her.

“You there! Halt!” Gwen hadn’t listened to the order from the king’s soldiers, and she doesn’t listen to it from the king. She leaps to her feet and takes off in the direction her bracelet guides her, even as the king races to follow.

 _Doesn’t this just take the cake,_ Gwen thinks as she runs, and then: _Wall!_ She puts out a hand and swings herself sharply around the corner. She can hear the king’s footsteps behind her, getting closer, and focuses hard on the heat around her wrist.

Swing left, trip over another left, lef- no, right this time, stumble over ankle-

Gwen jerks and twists in a discordant ballet, holding her arm out in front of her now. Her gait is off-balanced and she tries desperately to stay on her feet. Two guards join the king in pursuit behind her and she squeaks in fright.

Another flight of stairs is before her and she flings herself off it (the decision is stupid, and mostly fueled by panic) and somehow lands on her feet, crouched, before tipping forward onto her hands. She looks up, and sees a labyrinth ahead, and gates lining the halls with flickering torches few between.

The dungeons. _Thank goodness._ Not something she ever thought she would think.

Two guards are at the entrance and they look warily at her, one drawing his sword.

“No,” she gasps out, “It’s urgent, the king…” she doesn’t know what she’s saying, but she points behind her. “Attack. Soldiers.” The other draws his weapon and they both dash down the hall from where she came. _That worked._

She hears a crash that probably means the two parties ran into each other, and darts into the maze before her.

Some of the cells are empty, and some are full. Some people call out to her as she passes, but as she dashes further in, they only watch dully. She doesn’t stop to look at them, but that’s just as well. The cells aren’t the prettiest pictures.

She chants a litany of curses and prayers in her mind as she twists and turns, becoming completely lost. The faster and longer she runs the more she leans on her ankle, bumping into the wall on every other step. The corridors grow darker and darker, and the bracelet grows hotter and hotter.

The noises die away eventually behind her, the men most likely losing track of her. She slows to a sort of limping jog and trails one hand on the wall. The bracelet is hot now. _Really_ hot.

 _Searing_.

Gwen hisses through her teeth and squints around in the blackness, relying mostly on touch.

“Hello?” she whispers. No answer. She listens intently, concentrating over the pain of the band. Nothing… nothing… something. An ever-so-slight exhale, the sound of breathing. “Morgana?”

No one answers, but someone is there. Gwen twitches slightly in the dark, the blindness unsettling. Something could be just behind her- she whirls around and falls to the ground with a thump.

Light. She needs light.

She doesn’t have any light.

She sits and breathes for a moment, getting herself under control, and then promptly loses it again when footsteps echo down the hall.

A flickering light appears with a silhouette. Man with a sword. Guard. _Guard with a light._

Gwen crouches, animal-like, against the wall, and is still and quiet. Something scuttles beside her and a rat skitters across the hall. Gwen bites her lip to stop a whimper escaping, but the noise of the creature’s feet draws the guard’s attention.

He walks down the hall slowly. Gwen fumbles around the ground for a rock, anything, but comes up fruitless.

The man is upon her, but doesn’t see her. The light doesn’t reach that far into the shadows. Holding her breath, Gwen extends one leg, the one with the extra-strong ankle.

Straight and true as an arrow, the guard’s foot catches right on Gwen’s ankle and he tumbles onto the ground. The torch rolls to a stop beside him.

He doesn’t get up.                                                                                                                             

Gwen’s breath hitches, and she grabs up the torch before it can go out. Then she checks the man.

Still breathing, thank goodness. She sighs in relief.

She steps delicately over him, and holds the torch where she had heard the breath. It’s a cell, alright. As she steps closer, the bracelet burns her wrist.

 


	8. Evil Glares and Endless Stairs

Morgana.

Gwen stops breathing again when she sees. It’s not a sight she ever wished to lay eyes on.

The witch’s wrists are chained awkwardly to the wall above her head, and the rest of her is slumped beneath it. Her dress is tatters and she’s covered in dirt, and, Gwen sees with a sinking feeling, blood. Her head lolls above her chest: unconscious.

The sight makes Gwen’s heart flare up in outrage and empathy.

“Morgana,” she whispers. “How long have you been here?”

 _Witch_ , reminds her head, _evil._ She tells the voice to stuff it.

Gwen glances at the torch; it won’t burn forever. She must hurry. The lock on the door of the cell is simple and Gwen would have laughed if she hadn’t felt sick to her stomach. She picks it with a bit of something sharp she finds on the floor, that she tries desperately not to recognize as a small, gnawed bone.

The lock clicks, the gate opens, and Gwen rushes to Morgana’s side.

“Oh, Morgana,” Gwen moans. She looks even worse up close. Along with the chains holding her to the wall, there are two metal bands around her forearms. Gwen runs her fingers over the cuffs chaining her, and slides the sliver (not bone!) into those locks. When they fall open Gwen catches Morgana’s hands. They are chaffed and bleeding, and old dried blood has dripped to her elbows.

Gwen winces and feels sicker. _Pull it together!_ Right. Almost without thinking Gwen props the torch against the wall and feels around in her pack, pulling out a leaf. She chews it hurriedly, managing not to choke at the taste, and then spreads it over Morgana’s wrists.

It works quicker on these open wounds than it did on Gwen’s ankle; she can see the welts healing and the redness fading before her eyes.

She drops Morgana’s wrists and touches one of the bands around her forearms. There is no lock for those.

She decides to deal with that later. Now, to get out…

Before she can even begin to think, Morgana gives a groan and her eyes flicker open.

“Wh- _Gwen_?” She tries to lift her head but apparently can’t find the strength. Gwen crowds closer to her and pulls her head up, cradling her face in her hands. The witch’s eyes are swamped by purple circles.

“Morgana? It’s me, it’s Gwen. Can you hear me?”

“’M dreaming…” Morgana murmurs, and her eyes start to close. Gwen hates to do this, but she squeezes her eyes shut and slaps Morgana sharply across the face.

“You’re not dreaming. Wake up.”

Morgana blinks in surprise at her.

“You’ve never… said that b’fore…” she says, more coherently. Gwen’s heart rips in two and jumps in a lake.

“What are these?” Gwen asks, tapping the bands on her arms. “These bracelets?”

“Hm… for my magic…” Morgana slumps forward. Gwen pushes her back. “’N make me weak…” Gwen tries to twist one, then slide it off, to no avail.

“Okay. We’ll get them off later. Wake up!” Morgana’s eyes open again, almost fully this time.

“Guinevere? What are you…?” Gwen stands, grabbing the torch.

“Can you stand?” Morgana shifts a bit, then attempts to push herself up. She makes it about three inches. “Right,” Gwen mutters. She crouches and pulls one of Morgana’s arms around her shoulders and heaves her up. Nothing like years of carrying buckets of water up stairs for developing some muscle. Or at least the ability to lift heavy things, which Morgana is, as she isn’t exactly making an effort to support herself.

“You’ve got to help me, Morgana,” Gwen says. “We’ve got to get out.” Morgana droops a bit, then pushes up farther onto Gwen and stands a little steadier. “Good. Let’s go.”

They stagger out of the cell and peer up and down the hallway. Or Gwen does, at least. Then she notices the problem. They are utterly lost.

The soldier groans on the floor.

Hurriedly, Gwen drags Morgana over and scoops up his sword.

“Can you carry this?” she asks the witch, waving the torch. Morgana, who seems to be gaining higher consciousness rapidly, takes it. Gwen points the sword at the soldier.

The fallen man groans and rolls over. He catches sight of Gwen and snaps into action, leaping towards her.

Gwen swishes the sword expertly (though a little awkwardly with Morgana leaning on her), and he falls back, narrowly avoiding losing a hand. She has never been more grateful that her father insisted she know how to wield a blade, as well as make them.

“I know how to use this,” she threatens. “If you so much as open your mouth to yell, I’ll have your head off.”  (Gwen wouldn’t, she would only knock him out, but _he_ doesn’t need to know that).

The guard glares at her, but apparently prizes his own life above the need to warn the king.

“Right,” Gwen says. “Lead us out of here. _Don’t_ try anything, I won’t hesitate to run you through.”

Gwen hopes she looks convincingly mean and tough, like she eats kittens for breakfast. In actuality, she only looks quite mad. It achieves the same affect.

The man moves slowly to pass Gwen and Morgana on the left, then starts down the hall. The girls follow, Gwen dragging Morgana and struggling to keep the sword inches from the man’s back.

In five minutes, as they’re going around a corner, the guard tries to make a run for it.

Gwen stumbles forward just in time and kicks the back of his knee with her healed foot, and he drops like a stone.

This time he doesn’t lose consciousness, but he does roll on the floor and moan a bit.

“Oh, get up, it’s not that bad,” Gwen snaps. The man whimpers some more. _Oh_ , Gwen realizes, _my ankle._ It must have made more of an impact than usual.

“Up,” Gwen says, holding to her “mean façade”. (Or “mad façade”). And don’t try that again.”

Against all odds, and to Gwen’s amazement, the guard does not try it again, and leads them in twenty minutes to the entrance of the dungeons, where Gwen had first distracted the men guarding it.

“Thank you,” Gwen says politely. Morgana trembles on her shoulder from the long walk. Now what to do with the guard… “Um, walk over there,” she says, pointing at a cell to her right.

The guard looks slightly terrified and does as he’s told. Gwen sticks her foot out as he walks by and, for the second time that day, he stumbles over her magically-strengthened ankle and knocks his head on the floor, out cold.

Morgana giggles slightly on Gwen’s shoulder.

“Are you with me?” Gwen asks.

“Mmm.”

“Stay that way.”

The stairs are tricky to navigate, and Gwen silently swears to kill (or demolish, whatever) them all as she carries the majority of Morgana up them.

When they reach the top Morgana sort of folds over, and Gwen goes down with her. They half lie, half sit on the top step, panting.

“You’re heavy,” Gwen ribs, elbowing Morgana in the side. She gets no response. The witch is frighteningly pale, eyelids drooping and head nodding.

“Alright,” Gwen says, “Up we get.” _Before you pass out,_ she thinks, and then: _I need a cart, or a wheelbarrow,_ as she heaves Morgana along the corridor.

She follows, as best she can, the path through the hallways she took to get to the dungeons in the first place. In her mind they’re about halfway back to the kitchens when a servant rounds the corner ahead of them and stops dead.

“Hey,” Gwen calls instantly, “No, wait!”

Useless. The girl screams, hikes up her dress, and runs back down the corridor. Gwen groans, both in exasperation and from the effort of fighting gravity. She hears the girl scream again:

“Help! Escaped prisoner!”

 _Of course everyone knows who Morgana is,_ Gwen thinks in dismay as she looks around desperately.

She props Morgana against the wall and dashes to the nearest door. Pulls it open, shoves her head in. Empty. She drags Morgana into the room and slams the door closed.

 _Déjà vu._ Not a bedroom, this time, but some kind of study with a large desk and cabinet. She drops Morgana in the chair at the desk and rushes around the room.

The cabinet is full of scrolls and books. The only other furniture is the desk and a long table.

Gwen groans and stomps her foot, then stumbles to the side because she stomped with her oddly healed one.

 _Hide hide hide-_ but there isn’t anywhere.

“Okay,” Gwen says, panicking. “Morgana…” She drags Morgana across the floor and crouches with her against the wall a few inches from the doorframe.

“Wake up, come on,” she whispers. _Please._

She hears the soldiers thundering down the hall, stopping to open the doors. Morgana slumps over and suddenly Gwen’s glad, because now she’s certain not to make any noise. Gwen huddles as close the wall as she can and supports Morgana in front of her, so the witch is leaning back against her chest.

Feet stop outside the door.

Gwen shuffles them back from the doorframe and places a hand over Morgana’s mouth.

The door opens, and a man steps inside. Gwen is still and quiet (and Morgana is the same). He glances around the room, never noticing the two girls curled just to the right of his knees against the wall, then shouts “Clear!” and stomps back into the hall.

Gwen stops holding her breath and drops her head onto Morgana’s shoulder, trying not to laugh hysterically.

She uncurls and relaxes against the wall, legs out in front of her, and arranges the semi-conscious Morgana so that she’s lying with her head on Gwen’s lap.

“That was close,” Gwen finally says. Morgana doesn’t respond.

They sit and rest for ten minutes, until Gwen hopes the guards are gone for good. Then she rouses Morgana and they limp out of the room like a three-legged snake. (For those who’ve never seen such a specimen, imagine a drunk horse with one bad eye).

By some miracle they find the kitchen without much fuss. For some reason it’s deserted and Gwen grabs a slice of bread off a table before they got into the little storage room.

“Ah ha!” Gwen almost sobs with relief when she sees a cart like the one the servant she followed into the castle was using.

She tucks Morgana securely into it and covers her with empty sacks and a few likewise emptied crates on top.

In the courtyard she attempts to once again act nonchalant, but suspects she fails miserably (she does). There aren’t any guards at the gate, so she heaves it up by herself, then pushes the cart through with her foot in an odd shuffle. The gate clangs when she drops it.

Squinting at the sun, it’s almost dusk, the air just beginning to get hazy. She had been in the castle for most of the day.

 


	9. Giant Doors and Guard Patrols

There are a few stall owners left who look suspiciously at her as she trucks past, but most everybody has retired for the night.

She pulls the cart into a side alley, giving a baker a friendly smile, then walks until she can’t see the stalls when she looks behind her. She stops at some long-gone shop’s abandoned doorway and wheels the cart under an awning that’s half caved in.

She spreads the sacks on the ground and settles Morgana against the wall, then sits back on her heels. Now what? Morgana had said those cuffs on her arms are what’s keeping her weakened.

She examines one. It’s tight around Morgana’s arm, with no visible keyhole. Gwen picks up a sizeable rock form the ground , braces Morgana’s arm, and hits the cuff soundly. After a few minutes of this Gwen inspects her handiwork.

The rock hasn’t even scratched it. Not a dent.

 _Must be magic,_ thinks Gwen.  _Or just really strong._

Gwen tries pressing the stones in the cuff in different patterns; maybe it needs some kind of combination to unlock.

Morgana stirs where she’s lying on the sacks.

“Gwen? What…?”

“We’re outside the castle,” Gwen tells her. “Do you know how to get these bands off?”

Morgana lifts her arm up and squints at the bracelet.

“It’s… blocking my magic… makes me weak.”

“Yes, I know, but how do I take it off?” Gwen presses.

Morgana is silent for so long Gwen fears she’s fallen asleep with her eyes open.

“Cut it,” the witch finally says. “Can’t unlock it.”

“Right,” Gwen says, “With what?” But Morgana falls back into whatever daze has taken her mind.

Cut the cuff. Shouldn’t be too hard, she just needs to find something to cut it with.

 _Which you won’t find here,_ Gwen prompts herself. She shoves Morgana further into the doorway and covers her with the sacks. Hopefully nobody will find her while Gwen’s gone.

Where to find a tool that can cut through metal cuffs, is what Gwen wonders as she wanders through the streets. A blacksmith, perhaps?

Her father had had tools that could do it, but did blacksmiths in this kingdom have the same?

Gwen decides she is stupid for even thinking that: of course they do. It’s not like she’s on a different planet.

In the dusk not many people are about, but she catches the arm of a man who looks reliable.

“Excuse me, but could you point me to the blacksmith?”

The man gives her precise instructions (left here, right at the second street, third shop on the right) and she leaves him on his merry way.

When she reaches the shop she doesn’t go in, but circles to the side and peeks in a window. A large woman is setting a sword into a case in a room cluttered with tools and tables. Gwen settles down for a wait.

She doesn’t know exactly how long it’s been from when she first got there and the woman locked up and left (one hour and forty-five minutes), but the woman does. Gwen shimmies through the window that the blacksmith forgot to lock.

She looks around, searching for what she needs. There: hanging neatly on a rack. Long, thin shears that will definitely cut through those cuffs, if what she’d helped her father do was anything to go by.

She hefts them in her hands. _Morgana’s freedom for the necklace. She’ll take it._ Gwen is certain.

She is oddly reluctant to leave the place, suddenly nostalgic and missing her father. She closes her eyes and breathes in the air for a moment, then makes herself leave. As she slides back out the window, she assures herself that she’ll return the tool. It’s just borrowing, then.

She gets lost on the way back to Morgana and has to circle around the castle to find her again. Behind the gates guards are swarming the courtyard, and Gwen’s ears catch snatches of conversation.

“The witch,” someone says fearfully.

“Knocked a guard out cold,” reports another.

“Dangerous.”

“Search the city.”

At the last one Gwen bolts, sprinting back to the abandoned shop and Morgana.

_They’re searching. Must get out._

“Morgana,” she hisses, shaking the witch’s shoulder. “My lady.” _No, not any more._   “Morgana!” Suddenly she does wake up and blink at Gwen.

“Gwen? Where am I? What’s going on?”

Gwen thanks all that is holy that Morgana’s mind is clear.

“We’re outside Abernard’s citadel, in the main town. You probably don’t remember anything.” Morgana shakes her head. “You told me I need to cut those cuffs off. They’re keeping you weak.”

“But how did I get here?” Morgana persists.

“I got you out. And before you ask why, you have something I need.”

“What?” Morgana looks more than a little confused but _there isn’t time!_

“Listen for a moment. I’ll get those cuffs off.” Gwen hefts the shears and suddenly Morgana is paying attention, “But I need your necklace.”

“What necklace?”

“The selenite one, that you always wear.”

Morgana stares at her for a moment, then drops her head, looking bewildered and dismayed.

“I don’t have it.”

“What?” Gwen asks shrilly. Memories of Camelot and plans for the saving of it go up in flames before her eyes. The world tilts.

“Gwen?” Morgana shouts. “Gwen! I know where it is!”

Gwen’s mind drags her back into the moment.

“You do?”

“Well, I know who has it. Or did, whenever I first came here. I don’t know how long it’s been.”

Gwen shrugs. Neither does she.

“Okay. Good enough. Swear that if I release you, you’ll help me get it back.”

“But _why_? And why did you rescue me? What is going _on_ , Gwen?” Morgana sounds desperate. 

Gwen takes a deep, thoughtful breath. Should she tell her? Morgana might refuse to help. Then again, Abernard had imprisoned her. She probably holds a deeper grudge for him at the moment.

“Camelot is under attack.”  Morgana’s gaze shutters, and she narrows her eyes. “Abernard’s called up a High Shade and put everyone to sleep.” 

Morgana doesn’t respond for a few moments, instead looking eerily at Gwen.

“Why should I help?” she asks finally. “Camelot has done nothing for me.” Gwen snorts.

“I’m not discussing the past right now. Abernard imprisoned you for months and blocked your magic. Will you aid his takeover of Camelot?”

“How are you awake?” Morgana asks suddenly. “You would have been affected by the High Shade’s magic.”

Gwen holds up her wrist and Morgana’s eyes widen at the bracelet.

“You still…” Gwen nods sharply.  Morgana closes her eyes for a moment, thinking, then decides. “I will help you find the necklace in return for removing these bands.”

“Swear,” Gwen says. “Swear on… your magic.” Morgana glares at her, but does it. “Good. Right then. Hold out your arm.”

Gwen turns the shears nervously. She doesn’t want to accidentally cut off Morgana’s arm. There’s not much space between her skin and the metal. Finally Gwen decides to just get it over with. She pushes herself up on her knees, slides on end of the shears under the cuff with some difficultly, and squeezes them shut with all of her strength.

Morgana hisses in pain, but the cuff slowly splits and drops off her arm, leaving nothing but a deep red mark where the shears pressed in.

Morgana shakily offers her other arm and Gwen repeats the process. The second cuff clangs against the ground and Morgana drops like a stone, unconscious.

“Not again,” Gwen mutters. But this time Morgana’s face is bright red. Gwen places a hand to her forehead; it’s fever hot. For lack of something better to do she lays Morgana down with a pillow made from a few sacks and settles beside her to keep watch.

It’s dawn when Morgana stirs.

“Morning,” Gwen greets. Morgana groans and pushes herself up. “You all up to scratch?”

Morgana shrugs.

“Here,” Gwen says, and hands her some dried meat and bread from her pack. “You must be hungry.” Morgana tucks in with supremely un-ladylike decorum, but then again, she isn’t a noble anymore, is she?

When she’s eaten every crumb, Morgana leans back against the wall and looks expectantly at Gwen.

“Where’s the necklace?” Gwen asks, without preamble. Morgana raises an eyebrow, but replies.

“One of the knights who captured me took it. His name is Ralin, I believe. Ralin Johnson. I overheard someone talking to him,” she adds, by way of explanation.

“Well, if he’s a knight he’ll live in the kingdom, if he’s not off on a quest or something,” Gwen says. “We could ask someone.” Morgana looks skeptical. “Trust me. Come on.”

Gwen grabs one of the sacks and puts the broken cuffs in, along with the shears. Morgana struggles to her feet with help from the wall.

“Can you walk?” Morgana takes a shaky step and stumbles. “Fine. Come here.” Gwen loops Morgana’s arm around her shoulders and supports her as they walk back out to the main streets.

“Keep your head down,” Gwen tells her. “They’re searching for you.” It’s almost unnecessary, because once again the streets are mostly empty in the early dawn. They walk slowly through the streets while Gwen looks for the right shop.

“This should work,” she finally says, stopping outside a shop.

“A jeweler’s?” Morgana asks. Gwen doesn’t reply, just walks them inside the open door.

“Hello?” she calls. The shop is organized and clean, displays set up in locked boxes, probably magically. There is a rustle, and a wizened old man shuffles to the front of the counter.

“’Ow can I be helpin’ you, miss?” he croaks, and squints at them suspiciously. “If you wan’ my money, you’ll fin’ more ‘an you bargained for.”

“We’re not beggars or thieves,” Gwen says hurriedly, elbowing Morgana as she opens her mouth. “We just want some information. Do you know of a knight called Ralin Johnson?”

“Aye. ‘E buys trinkets for that wife ‘o his every so often.”

“Can you tell us where he lives?”

“’An jus’ ‘oo is it ‘oo wan’s to know?” the man glares at her and reaches a hand below the counter.

“I’ll have you-” Gwen slaps a hand over Morgana’s mouth.

“We can pay!” she says. “Or, trade. Look.” She releases Morgana, who sways but stays standing, and pulls out a cuff. The man reaches a hand out and she lets him inspect it.

“’S nice,” he says grudgingly. “Stones, good metal. Hm. I mi’ know where Johnson is. Maybe.” Gwen pulls out the other one. “Lives in th’ middle town.  ‘Ouse righ’ next to the water-wheel. Big door. Can’na miss it.” He grabs the other cuff and disappears into the back room.

“Wait!” Gwen calls. “One more thing.” The man shuffles back, glaring daggers at them. Gwen slides the shears in the sack onto the counter. “Make sure this gets to the blacksmith?”

The man grumbles under his breath, but takes the parcel and stomps away again.

Morgana looks impressed.

“My father always said that jewelers are the nosiest people in the kingdom,” Gwen explains, smiling slightly. “The one in Camelot, Gertrund, always knows what everyone is doing. Bit odd, actually.”

“Let’s go then,” Morgana says, and whirls to leave. It would have been impressive if she hadn’t stumbled immediately and narrowly missed the floor.

“Whoa there,” Gwen says as she catches her. “You’ve been chained to a wall for a few months. Give it time.”

They make their way through the town, asking for directions periodically from passersby as they wake up. The middle town is expansive but easy to navigate, and made mostly of houses.

“There it is,” Morgana says, pointing to a house by a small water-mill. “It certainly does have a big door.”

The windows of the house are still dark, so Gwen steers them to a set of steps that’s shaded and in view of the house, and they sit down to wait.

After a while they can see movement in the house, curtains are opened and morning sounds filter over to Gwen and Morgana. A man with black hair and a beard walks out the door.

“That’s him,” confirms Morgana. She shuts up when a woman calls his name and runs out the door after him, and the secret to the giant door is revealed. The woman is enormous. Gwen thinks she must be seven feet tall.

She hands a bag to Johnson, and when she turns the rising sun glints off something around her neck.

The necklace.

“Is that it?” Gwen asks quietly. Morgana nods. They wait until the man has disappeared down the street, then Gwen stands up.

“You stay here,” she tells Morgana. “I’m going to go talk to her and see if I can’t get that necklace back.

“How?” Gwen shrugs, and walks quickly over to the house and knocks on the giant door. The woman answers it on the third knock. Gwen resists the urge to stumble back from her gargantuan frame.

“Yes, what is it?” the woman asks gruffly.

“Hello, madam,” Gwen greets. The necklace glitters tantalizingly down at her. “I’m here to… ask you about something.”

“What?”

“Um… that necklace.”

“What about it?” asks the woman, covering it protectively with one hand.

“May I ask when you received it, madam? You see, you are most likely unaware that that particular necklace… is cursed,” Gwen says dramatically, making it up on the spot.

“Cursed?” squeaks the woman.

“Indeed,” Gwen says gravely, warming to her tale. “I have been tracking its owners across the country for a year now, and it has led me to you. Thus far, whoever owns the necklace has died within a year of receiving it, along with their families.”

The woman gives a little shriek and yanks the necklace off, dropping it at Gwen’s feet.

“Please, I’ve only had it a few months, I didn’t know!”

“If you’ve been in possession of it for less than nine months the curse will not affect you,” Gwen soothes, feeling guilty. She picks the necklace up. “But I’m sure you understand why I need to secure this. Simply too dangerous to be allowed to circulate.” The woman nods fervently.

“Thank you, thank you for finding me in time. You saved my husband and I.”

“It was no hardship, madam. Thank you for your cooperation.” Gwen nods to her and leaves, and the woman slams the giant door behind her.

“Got it!” Gwen says happily when she reaches Morgana, who’s eying her with interest.

“That was clever,” she compliments. Gwen almost replies, then remembers that Morgana’s evil now and _not_ her friend and just nods, wiping her smile off. She makes herself not notice Morgana’s frown.

“Come on,” Gwen says, turning away. “Let’s get _out_ of here.”

 

 


	10. Night Fights and No Respite

It’s fairly simple to get out of the city; they simply swim against the tide in the sea of carts and horses and pedestrians that are swarming in from the outer kingdom. It’s slow going, with Gwen assisting Morgana the entire way, but they do eventually make it to the road that leads back to Mercia.

Gwen stops them outside one of the sparse houses in the fields outside the city.

“You need clothes,” she points out. Morgana looks down at the remains of her dress, and duly agrees.

Gwen dawdles, guilty once more about stealing from strangers. Then Morgana, who apparently has some strength back, sighs in exasperation, limps over, and pulls a pair of pants and a tunic mercilessly from the pile of washing. She changes quickly and leaves the dress on the ground.

Gwen says nothing, but leads the way along the road.

In half an hour they reach the seemingly endless forest, and Gwen veers off the path into the woods.

Morgana follows.

Gwen walks for a few more minutes, considering, then stops and faces the witch.

“Listen, I’m going back to Camelot.” Morgana stares at her blankly. “You fulfilled your end of the deal, helped get the necklace back. You can go wherever you want.” 

“I am going back with you,” Morgana says imperiously. Gwen shakes her head.

“No, you see, you want to destroy Camelot and kill Arthur. So I really can’t let you do that.” 

Morgana’s expression is wretched for a moment, then composed again.

“This has nothing to do with Arthur. Abernard imprisoned me for months, I want revenge. Thwarting his takeover of Camelot will suffice for now.”

“Then you’ll just try to take it over for yourself afterwards!” Gwen shouts. “Morgana, leave, now.”

Morgana looks hurt, and Gwen feels irrationally guilty.

“Look, I know I rescued you, but I needed the stone. You can’t come to Camelot. After what you did?”

“What if I said I regretted it?” Morgana puts in quietly. Gwen gives a shrill laugh.

“Please, Morgana. Just go.”

“Truly,” Morgana whispers. “Gwen...”

“Stop it,” Gwen says. “It’s not funny.” And it isn’t. Gwen feels fresh betrayal welling up out of the old, exploding into fury. “ _It’s not funny!_ ”

Morgana takes a step back.

“Gwen-”

“No!”

“I’m sorry!”

Gwen feels a tear slide down her cheek. When had she started crying?

“You were my friend,” she whispers. “I trusted you, more than anyone. How could you?”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“Liar. You meant to hurt everyone. And you did.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t care.” Gwen turns her back on Morgana and walks away. It takes thirty seconds for Morgana to call out again.

“Then why did you free me?” Gwen stops walking.

“You could have just left me there, made me tell you where the necklace was! But you rescued me instead, and healed me and freed my magic! Why did you do that, if you don’t care?”

Morgana touches her elbow. She had caught up to Gwen when she had stopped.

“I am sorry, Gwen. I regret everything I did. Let me make it up.”

Gwen stares at her, and her memories and instinct know that Morgana is telling the truth. But the hard lump in her throat that means tears and logic is screaming that Gwen can’t trust her. Not anymore.

“Let me come with you,” Morgana pleads. “I’ll… I’ll do everything to make it right. You can use my help, you know it. The High Shade? I’m a powerful witch, I can help. I know things, secrets, my magic is strong. Please.” 

Gwen nods curtly. Morgana gasps, and Gwen notices that she’s crying too.

“I haven’t forgiven you,” she says coldly. “And I don’t know if I believe you. But I’ve got a way to tell for sure once we’re back, and if you’re lying you’ll be sorry.”

_Kilgharrah will know. He seems like he should be able to tell._

“Let’s go, then. It’s a long way back.”

Morgana is recovering, but still weak, and they get off to a slow start. After half an hour, Morgana speaks again. Gwen thinks she was working up the nerve.

“I do not remember much,” she says slowly. “My mind was not clear.”

 _Will you tell me again?_  Gwen adds in her mind.

“One thing first,” Gwen says. Morgana nods. “There’s a big oak tree coming up. Is there a face in the bark?”

Morgana peers at it and nods.

“A dryad, I think.”

“Oh,” Gwen says, and wonders whether she’s glad she’s not crazy. 

“Everyone in Camelot is asleep,” Gwen begins, “The work of King Abernard and a High Shade he called up. Abernard called him “Zedon”.  Your necklace,” Gwen pats the pack where she’s stored it, “Is selenite, and it’s the main ingredient in something that can kill it. The necklace was the closest source, you know how Uther banned it.”

“And you came all this way and rescued me by yourself?” Gwen nods. “That is… impressive.” Gwen blushes, but doesn’t respond. Flattery isn’t going to help Morgana now.

They trek all day through the forest, following alongside the main road without incident and mostly in silence. They are, however, making much slower time than if Gwen had been alone, due to Morgana’s depleted energy.

Finally at dusk Gwen can’t ignore Morgana’s yaws and increasingly frequent stumbling, or her own fatigue. There aren’t any houses for miles, though, Gwen notes despairingly.

There is, however…

“A cave,” Gwen says, pointing. Morgana peers through the gloom at the dark entrance.

“I don’t know…”

“Trust me, we don’t want to sleep in the open,” Gwen says, thinking with a shudder of starving yellow eyes. “Come on.”

When they reach the cave, Morgana whispers a spell and a small glowing orb appears, illuminating the area. The cave is large and barren.

“See?” Gwen says. “Empty. We’ll be safer here than out there, once we have a fire. Can you make one?” 

Morgana silently pulls some dead branches in from outside and sets them alight. The orb disappears as the fire flares.

“Thanks,” Gwen says. “We should rest.”

Morgana nods and curls up a few feet away from the fire. As Gwen does the same, she thinks earnestly: _And please don’t kill me in my sleep._

Morgana doesn’t even try.

Something else, however, does.

~xXx~

Zedon has had enough. He orders everyone out of the room and draws his power to his fingertips and tongue, readying himself.

After a second’s concentration he breathes deep and exhales in a flurry of words spit like seeds off his lips, whirling up into a storm inside the room, over the bed and the boy.

He releases the spells and they hammer at Emrys, his body and mind, like a million nails driven by hammers.

The spells flash and smoke, lighting the room in purple and black, sending great bursts of excess energy out the windows and doors.

Finally he calls them to a stop and grins, stepping over to the bed. No mortal could have withstood that, nor many immortals.

His grin fades, though, when he sees the untouched body of the warlock, and he howls with anger.

~xXx~

Emrys’ shields are battered and cracking, and the barrage keeps up even as he pulls more over him like blankets.

Black magic of the foulest kind, waking his oldest, deep-seated instincts crashes down on to him, wave after wave after wave. He is only Emrys now, and he holds his name and its power like another shield, yelling out waves of magic that ward off the attacker.

 _Arthur,_ Emrys dreams and thinks, and imbues the name and its meaning through his power, and the evil recoils, for the moment.

Emrys sleeps, and fights nightmares in his dreams.

~xXx~

Gwen is woken by a furious roar, so primal and menacing that she attempts to scramble into the solid rock wall to get away while still mostly asleep.

There by the light of the still-flickering fire is a gigantic cat, as tall as Gwen. Standing at the mouth of the cave, brown with black speckles and an enormous mane, it roars again, and saliva flies off its massive fangs.

Morgana screams, and it attacks at the noise.

Gwen’s eyes can’t follow its rapid movement, but one moment the beast is at the cave entrance and the next above Morgana, raking huge claws down her arm.

“Morgana!” Gwen shouts. _Do something!_

She shoves down the urge to hare it out of the cave and scrambles to the fire and pulls out a burning branch. The flames lick at her hand but she lunges for Morgana, waving the branch at the cat.

When it rears, yowling, Gwen throws the flame in its face.

It turns in a desperate circle and Gwen hoists Morgana up, dragging the witch deeper into the cave, and then into a network of tunnels at the back.

 

 


	11. Red Leaves and Real Words

Gwen tries to keep running, but Morgana slips from her grasp and hits the floor with a whimper.

“Morgana?” Gwen whispers. “Can you make a light?”

The orb blooms into existence over Gwen’s shoulder and she gasps and drops to her knees when she looks at the witch. Morgana’s arm is, for lack of a better word, shredded. Four long gashes run down it and onto her side, bleeding profusely. Morgana looks at the damage and breathes sharply, gasping.

“Ah-”

“No, it’s okay,” Gwen assures her, ripping the sleeve of Morgana’s tunic off. “It’s not as bad as it looks.” Morgana groans and rolls her head to the side away from her arm. _Please don’t let it be as bad as it looks._ “I swear it isn’t. Keep still. _Keep still._ ”

Gwen slides her pack off and sets it on the ground, repeating the words in her mind.

“Gwen?” Morgana asks, voice high.

“Shh.”

Deep breath. _This must work._ Inhale…

_“Þurhhæle dolgbenn.”_

Gwen can feel it this time, instantly taking hold. She watches as the bleeding slows, clots, and new skin stitches over the long wounds, all the way up her arm and down her side.

Morgana gasps, once, twice, and her eyes close.

“Oh no, _no,_ Morgana not again,” Gwen shouts, slapping her friend. “Morgana stay _awake_!”

“I’m awake,” Morgana mumbles. She opens her eyes and sits up, hands fluttering over her wounds. Or what used to be wounds. Scars, now. “Gwen, did you- you used magic!”

“Yeah,” Gwen admits.

“You’re a witch!”

“I prefer sorceress,” Gwen mutters. _Since when?_ she asks herself. _Since now, I suppose._ “And I only know that one spell.”

Morgana is silent for a moment.

“A sorceress is the same thing as a witch, you know.”

“Yes, technically,” Gwen replies. “But… I think I like “sorceress” better.”

“How did you learn?” Morgana asks, eager. “When did you start?”

“A few days ago, and it’s a long story. We should probably think about how we’re getting out of these tunnels, though. Wilddeoren.”

Gwen helps Morgana up, and the witch looks around.

“No wilddeoren here. I know this place. I… hid here, and when I left to get to the road, Abernard’s knights caught me.  These tunnels are vast, but I may be able to find another exit from what I remember.”

 _Better than nothing,_ Gwen thinks, and gestures for Morgana to lead the way. The little witch-light bobs over her shoulder.

The air in the tunnels is thick and misty, pressing in on Gwen with invisible cushions. Morgana, seemingly guided by an inner compass, is silent as she leads.

Gwen forces herself to focus on the witch-light and not on the dark, or the way time doesn’t seem to pass inside the stone.

 _Look how dark it is,_ whispers are treacherous voice in her head, _Look at how close the walls are. If that ceiling were to crumble suddenly-_

 _Stop it,_ Gwen orders, _Look at the light._

Of course, as must inevitably happen, Morgana stops walking. Gwen breathes slowly. _In, out._ Damp air clogs her throat.

_Damp?_

“Gwen?” Morgana asks, worried. “Are you alright?”

“Yes,” she replies tightly. “Why have we stopped?”

“I’m lost,” admits Morgana.

Silence fills the tunnel.

“Gwen?”

_Breathe, Gwen. In, out. Don’t mind the walls, don’t mind how close they are-_

“Can you make more light?” Gwen asks desperately.

“Of course.” Morgana conjures three more orbs, and one floats right up to Gwen’s face. She puts a hand out and cups it- it pulses gently like a heartbeat.

“I’m okay,” she says, mostly to herself. “It’s just… the air…” Gwen takes another moist breath. 

“What about it?”

“It’s...,” deep breath, “Damp. It’s damp!” Gwen grabs the witch-light and moves it around, shining the glow on the cave walls.

Using the light and straining her ears, Gwen stalks down the tunnels, Morgana tiptoeing behind.

Then…

“Ha!” Gwen shouts, “A river!”

And a river it is, running through time-smoothed rock, deep and wide as any stream she’s seen. She unfolds her hands and the witch-light takes off like a firefly and loops over the water, crossing to the far bank and back.

Gwen drops onto a rock beside the water and peers at Morgana by the light of the magic.

“It’s bigger here,” she says, relieved and half-embarrassed. “Since we’re lost anyway.”  Morgana settles down across from her.

“We may as well rest,” she says. “I’m sorry I got us lost.”

“We’d have gotten lost anyway,” Gwen says.                                        

They sit for a few minutes, listening to the water rush, and Gwen idly plays with the returned witch-light.

“How are you doing that?” Morgana asks out of the blue.

“Doing what?” 

“Touching the light. They are only supposed to float beside you, look.” Morgana reaches out to a witch-light and passes a hand through one. It doesn’t interrupt its gentle up-and-down movements.

“Oh,” Gwen says thoughtfully, and glances at her light. She spins it on a finger. “I didn’t know you couldn’t.”

Morgana nods as if the question’s been answered.

“So, if you haven’t been sleeping in caves,” says Morgana, recalling their conversation in the forest, “Or the woods, where have you been sleeping?”

Gwen laughs.

“I’ve been bunking down in hay bales, mostly. Had a bit of an incident with wolves when I tried to sleep in the forest. Still, hasn’t always worked out so well.”

“Something happened?”

“Yeah, I woke up late last time. Some soldiers found me.”

“What happened?” Morgana whispers, morbidly curious.

“I fell off a cliff.” Morgana looks horrified, and glances up and down Gwen’s body as though looking for broken bones and gashes. “Oh, no,” Gwen assures her. “I mean, I was pretty bashed up.  Mostly dead, I think. But then the vilia…” Gwen stops. “The vilia, Morgana!” Gwen scrabbles frantically in her pack.

“You met vilia?”  Morgana exclaims.

“Yes, yes, they healed me, and then they gave me this leaf… ah ha!” Gwen pulls out the red leaf and holds it up. “They said this would call them to me.”

Morgana watches intently as Gwen drops the leaf into the river, and they both lean out over the water to watch the current carry it away. They watch the ripples in the water expectantly for a while, then sit back.

“Well, they said it would,” Gwen defends.

After a few more minutes of nothing happening, Gwen begins to lose hope. _Maybe the leaves expired. Maybe we’re too far-_

“Gwen,” Morgana says, “Look!”

Something is glowing down the river, swimming slowly upstream. As it gets closer it resolves into three watery orbs under the surface and stop whey they’ve reached the pair. They emerge from the stream and look passively at Gwen.

“You’re not the same ones,” is the first thing Gwen says. They’re a different color, mossy green.

“We are many,” replies the vilia at the front of the trio. Gwen looks at Morgana, who looks amazed.

“Told you so.”

“And the witch,” the leader says. “Who devastated the balance and wrought darkness in the land and our waters.”

Morgana pales, and Gwen thinks _Perhaps this wasn’t a good idea,_ but the witch only bows her head.

“I regret what I did,” she whispers shakily, “I am sorry, although I know that will not fix anything.

“It will not,” the vilia intones.

“I will try to make reparations for what I have done, and what destruction I have caused.”

Throughout this Gwen sits and stares, mouth oven. The vilia are silent for so long that if she wasn’t looking at them, she’d think they disappeared.

Then all three dip in the air, nodding towards Morgana and then back up. A bow?

“Your words are sincere,” says the leader. It turns to Gwen. “Why did you call us to you?”

“We need to get out of these caves,” Gwen explains hopefully. “Could you, I don’t know, get us a boat or something?”

“There is no water-craft for many hours,” answers the vilia, “But we can guide you as far as there is river.”

“Great!” Gwen says in relief. “That’s great.” She stands and pulls Morgana up. “Let’s go. The sooner we get out of these tunnels the better.” The vilia re-submerge and move slowly in the direction of the current.

“Hang on-” Gwen starts.

“-how do we follow?” Morgana finishes. One vilia bobs out of the water for a moment.

“Walk in the water.” It disappears again.

“That river’s freezing!” Gwen says. Morgana shrugs and pulls off her boots, rolls up her pants, and steps into the water. She blinks at Gwen .

“It isn’t cold anymore,” she reports. Gwen copies Morgana doubtfully and finds that the water is indeed only pleasantly warm, though it comes up to her hips so there really wasn’t any point in rolling up her trousers.

“Let’s go then,” Gwen says, and they slosh after the vilia. The witch-lights obediently follow.

“So,” Gwen says after a few minutes of silence, having been turning over Morgana’s conversation (albeit a short one) with the vilia in her head. “You’re being honest, according to the magical bubbles. About being sorry. You really regret it?”

Morgana looks at her so desperately Gwen wants to turn away.

“Truly.”

“All of it?” Morgana hesitates, and Gwen thinks _I knew it._

“No. Not becoming a witch. Not Uther being dead, or killing him. I would do it a hundred times over.”  And yes, Gwen can understand that, now she has the full story and isn’t feeling betrayed and confused in the castle as it takes place.

 In the deep recesses of her mind a voice hisses _You would have done the same, if it was you. You know it, you just won’t admit it._ And Gwen’s conscience tells her she can’t hold something against Morgana that she would do herself. It doesn’t work like that.

“But,” Morgana continues, “My actions towards my… friends, you, Arthur… Camelot itself, my home… I regret that. I was alone and lost, mostly in hatred and confusion, and I did unforgivable things.” 

Gwen stops walking and stares at her friend.

“How could you think you were alone, Morgana?” She feels, if anything, insulted. “I would never have- have _betrayed_ you, or told Uther! Neither would Arthur, not even for a second would he have turned away from you!”

Morgana just shakes her head.

“I didn’t know who I could trust. The magic… and Uther… I didn’t know.”

A low hum interrupts Gwen’s reply.  A vilia is hovering just out of the water.

 “We must proceed,” it says.

“Yeah,” Gwen says, “Yeah, of course, sorry. Lead on.”

They slosh through the stream like that for hours, until Gwen’s legs are numb and her whole body feels waterlogged, despite the warm temperature.

Finally, the water begins to ebb away, until it’s only ankle deep. Here the vilia once more rise up to eye level.

“This is as far as we may travel,” the leader says. “Follow this water until you reach the open air.”

“Thank you,” Gwen says. Morgana echoes the sentiment. The vilia dip in the air and then sink back underwater, and swim slowly upstream.

“Come on then,” Gwen prompts. “It can’t be that far. I think I see light.”

When they finally step out of the caves Gwen laughs a bit hysterically, and swears to herself never to never get trapped in a cave again. Morgana flows down on the ground and rolls her sopping wet pants back down.

It’s midday, by the look of the sun, and Gwen feels, as she pulls on her boots, that things are looking up. Morgana… regrets being evil? Isn’t evil anymore?

Is on somewhat better terms with Gwen, she eventually decides. And, well, that’s it, really.  Camelot is still cursed, and she has no idea where they are.

 

 


	12. Axe Men and Acts of Good

As if reading her mind, Morgana says:

“We should find out where we are. Do you have any food?”

Food is added to the list of “things to find”, right after location. There are signs of civilization, at least. Footprints leading away from the caves, albeit sporadically, and a few stale bread crusts tossed to the ground.

In only a few minutes they find the village: small, but respectable-looking, a condensed area of houses and shops that should take up much more room than they actually do.  They fix themselves up as best they can before entering, pulling twigs out of hair and hiding the tears in their clothes.

Late afternoon is a bad time to go into the market as far as being inconspicuous goes; the square is crowded. People point and stare, and give them wide berths.

It’s tiring, in a way that running on two hours sleep is not.

Eventually, in search of information, they dash away from the crowds and into a butcher’s. The meaty man hanging chickens looks much like his wares, and looks doubtfully down at them.

“We’re travelers,” Gwen says off the top of her head. “Got into a scrap with some bandits.” The man, surprisingly, nods and looks sympathetic.

“Rowly an’ his lot,” he rumbles. “Thought we’d chased ‘em off for good. You two ladies travelin’ alone?”

Although he looks more concerned than suspicious, Gwen shakes her head.

“We’ve got two more waiting outside town. Things got confusing in the commotion, and they sent us to find out where we ended up.”

“This here’s Axetown,” the man says enthusiastically. “Named after Axe Oakman. Know who he is?” Gwen shakes her head, thinking maybe they should leave now.  “Fended off an entire attacking army with just his own axe!” the butcher thunders. “Born just north of ‘ere he was but a peasant boy when he first chopped down a tree like it was a matchstick, and discovered his skill with the magnificent instrument! When the was fourteen, he traveled-”

“Sorry,” Gwen interrupts hurriedly, before the man can get too far into the biography, “But the rest of our group is waiting. Thank you!”

They hurry back out to the street. Gwen only now notices the axe motifs carved and painted on signs and above doors on almost every building.

“Interesting,” Morgana notes lightly. “But Axetown is only two days from Camelot. We are in Mercia.”

“Those tunnels,” Gwen say wonderingly, “What a shortcut! They must have cut days off our time? Is that possible?”

“The road from Halesia to Mercia curves around the mountains for easier passage,” explains Morgana. “We must have gone right through them instead. We need to find the main road and make time.”

Irritated at the command, Gwen stops a raggedy-looking man in a strange hat to ask where the road to Camelot is.

“Ye’re on it, miss,” says the man, and smiles rather delightedly at his words. He points in the direction they were already walking and saunters past. Gwen looks suspiciously back, and checks her pack just in case anything was stolen.

Buoyed by the unexpected shortcut, Gwen leads the way as they follow the road out of town.

“Do you hear that?” Gwen asks suddenly, stopping. Morgana shakes her head. In a minute she hears it again: a high moan, or a low wail. “There it is again! Tell me you can’t hear that.”

Morgana hesitates, but shakes her head. Gwen keeps her hears strained for sound as they walk, and when she hears a loud cry, she takes off through the cramped houses after the noise. Morgana, protesting, follows.

The sound is coming from a rather battered house, and Gwen drops to the ground beside a low window and peeks in.

Candles are lit, even in the daytime, and three people are clustered around a bed. One of them, a man, is making the wailing sound, and a woman is sobbing into another’s shoulder. One moves away to slump in a chair, and Gwen can see a frighteningly pale small form on the bed.

“Gwen,” Morgana hisses, “Gwen, don’t, we cannot-” Gwen ignores her and raps the doorknocker in the shape of two axes crossed. The noise inside is snuffed out. A man’s tear-streaked face pears through the crack, glaring.

“I heard the noise,” Gwen explains. “Do you need help? I’m a physician.” A lie, but how else can she help the girl? And she must help.

The man’s demeanor changes instantly. He flings the door wide and pulls them inside.

“It is my daughter, my Eleanor,” he says, shoving Gwen to the bedside. “I took her with me to hunt and she ate poisonous berries. She is only eight!”

Gwen kneels beside the girl and feels her forehead: clammy and cold. She may not really be a physician, but she knows that’s not good.

“How long has she been like this?” Morgana asks, playing the part.

“Three days,” sobs the younger woman. “My baby, my Eleanor…”

 _Will the leaves work on poison?_ Gwen wonders, already rifling through her battered pack. _I suppose we’ll find out._ She pulls out the last leaf and looks at it hesitantly. The girl will probably need to swallow it…

“It needs to be chewed…” she mutters aloud, and looks dubiously at the girl.

“She can’t do it herself,” Morgana prompts. Gwen hesitates one more second, then braces herself and mashes the leaf into her mouth. She fights the urge to throw up at the taste. The three who were already morning the girl look on, not even questioning. Gwen finally spits the stuff into her hand, then wipes her tongue off on her tunic- foul.

“She needs to swallow it,” Gwen says aloud again, seeing the problem. “Is there water?”

“No,” Morgana says, voice iron. “Choking will kill her faster than the poison, _physician._ Put it in her mouth, I will get her to swallow.” Gwen looks doubtfully at Morgana. “You want her to die?” the witch snarls.

Gwen pries the girls jaw open with one hand and pushes the mush as far back in the girl’s mouth as she can, grimacing.

Morgana takes a deep breath and places one hand above the girl’s throat and one above her stomach. She closes her eyes and mutters under her breath, a long string of syllables that takes a few moments to complete. There are no lights or noises, only the sound of the girl coughing briefly, swallowing, and falling back into unconsciousness.

 Only, as becomes apparent when she starts snoring in a few minutes and her face regains color rapidly, it’s not a sickly passed-out state. It is true sleep.

The younger woman gasps and the man breaks out into fresh sobs. On the bed Eleanor takes a slow, deep breath.

“She’ll probably be fine in a few days,” Gwen says. She turns to Morgana, but doesn’t see her where she expects. Instead of standing smugly next to the bed she is sitting on the floor pale and winded.

“Morgana?” she asks, concerned despite herself, and crouches down.

“I will be fine in a moment. That spell is difficult.” Gwen nods, stands, and is engulfed in arms as three people hug her at once, then move to do the same to the weakened Morgana.

“Thank you,” the man gasps out, over and over again. “How can we ever- we can _never_ repay you!”

“Some food would be appreciated,” Morgana suggests. Gwen glares at her, but she only shrugs, and the family stumbles over each other in their eagerness. In seconds Gwen has to open her pack to pile in enough bread, cheese, and dried meat to last weeks. When the man tries to force an entire chicken onto her, she finally puts her foot down.

“Perhaps an axe?” the woman offers desperately. “One whose blade is engraved with the saga of our town founder, Axe Oakman, who when he was only a boy-”

“No,” Gwen says, slightly incredulously, “I don’t think so. Thank you, but we have more than enough.” She backs away slowly.

She is once again immersed in a group hug. The third woman, who looks like she could be a grandmother, holds her arm as she tries to open the door.

“A little food isn’t enough to repay ye for saving my granddaughter,” she says, wiping at tears. “Are ye sure there is nothing else?” Gwen shakes her head.

“Right now we just need to reach our destination.”

“I know,” Morgana says suddenly. Four pairs of eyes are riveted on hers, three in hope and one in exasperation and/or dread. “Should any soldiers come looking for us, tell them we went back to Halesia.”

“You’re criminals?” the man gasps immediately.  Gwen grabs Morgana’s hand and fumbles with the door handle. _Morgana you fool, why would you-_

A strong hand slams the door shut, and suspicious, old eyes peer into hers. The rest on the room has frozen. Then…

“We’ll tell ‘em,” croaks the old woman. “Ye’re not _that_ kind of criminal.” The entire room relaxes, and Gwen fights the urge to curl up and cry. She is so tired.

“Not sure about _her_ , though,” continues the grandmother, jerking a thumb at Morgana.

“Apologies,” the man says. “I did not wish to frighten you. But we will keep your secret.” Gwen nods shakily, and goes to open the door for the third time.

“Wait!” the man shrieks, which is unexpected in itself. His voice reaches a surprisingly high pitch. “I know how to repay you!”

“You don’t need-” Gwen gives up before she finishes the sentence. 

“No, really…” the man rummages below the bed and the surprisingly strong grandmother keeps holding the door. “If you won’t have an axe… I found it not a fortnight ago, I was picking gold moss with Eleanor… ah ha!” The man pulls out a long bundle of rags and thrusts it into Gwen’s hands.  She unwraps it to reveal… a sword.

A beautiful sword. And a good one, if Gwen knows swords, which she does, even through her weariness. It has rubies inlaid in the hilt, and intricate designs carved onto the blade, though thankfully no axes.

“Like I said, I found it in the caves, next to… well, next to some bones, pardon the image. Some knight, we think, must ‘ave slept in the wrong cave!”  Gwen and Morgana glance at each other briefly, both thinking of the killer cat. Though cat seems too little a word, now. “I was going to sell it,” rambles the man, “When those traders come to town, they’ll buy anything.”

“We can’t take this,” Gwen says, trying to hand the sword back. Morgana pokes her in the side and glares.

“What could a poor man like me do with that thing?” asks the man. “Take it. It eases my guilt to know you are somewhat repaid.”

Gwen hesitates for a second longer, then wraps the sword back up, anxious to be gone.

“Fully repaid,” she nevertheless corrects, and the man nods indulgently.

The pair finally make it back to the street, both with sighs of relief. Gwen tucks the wrapped sword under her arm, a bit uncomfortably.

“We should leave now,” Morgana says. So they do. They walk slowly through the town without any more delays, and are about to leave the place behind when Morgana stops outside a tavern. _The Singing Axe._ Gwen rolls her eyes.

“Fancy a drink?” she asks Morgana sarcastically. Morgana only gives her a wicked smile and glances pointedly at the building. Gwen looks past the sign and notices the two horses tied outside the building.

“No.”                                                                            

“But-”

“It’s stealing.”

“Gwen-”

“No!”

Morgana claps a hand over Gwen’s mouth.

“We need to get to Camelot fast. Your friends are in trouble. We won’t make good time like this, look at yourself, you’re exhausted, and so am I, from the night and the spell. And look- the Halesian crest. Enemy knights’ horses.”

Gwen fights a small battle inside her head, loses, and nods.

“Fine, but we’re sending them back.”

Ten minutes later Gwen and Morgana are trotting away from the town and into forest, Gwen sagging in the saddle, half asleep.  The sword is in a much more suitable spot specifically made for it on said saddle.

Gwen tries not to notice Morgana’s smug look as they make good time for the rest of the day, and stay in an inn that night with coins found in the saddlebags.

~xXx~

Kilgharrah worries. He senses Emrys, is bound to him, but the connection has changed. It is wild and strong, in a way it wasn’t before. It is defensive.

He opens his eyes again and peers across the land at the citadel, and sees the plumes of magic still enfolding the stone. He wishes, yearns for a way to help his Dragonlord, but dares not go near the tower. He must be here for the Lady Guinevere when she returns.

If she returns.

~xXx~

Zedon the High Shade growls and yells as he dances in the sleeping king’s chambers, weaving ever-increasingly complex and powerful spells.

A miasma of black sorcery coats the air and the stones of the walls and the bed and even him, everything but the thing on the bed.

He calls it a thing now, for no being could still survive after his assault, his continued song of war.

But he was called for this purpose, and he will continue.

~xXx~

 

 


	13. Tree Bark and Two Sides

Morgana pokes Gwen awake the next morning, sing-songing “Rise and shine!”

“Well, look who’s waking who,” Gwen ribs as they gather their things. It doesn’t take long; they had basically paid silently, dropped their things into a corner (after locking and having Morgana magically ward the door), and slept like the dead.

“We’re almost to Camelot,” Morgana says. “We’ll be there today.” Gwen nods, and feels like the prickle of nerves in her stomach. And then worry. Her friends are in Camelot; Arthur, Merlin- she suddenly feels immensely guilty that she hadn’t been worrying about them, or at least thinking.

_Not your fault. You’ve had other things to do, like save them._

“Let’s go,” Gwen says, and leads the way to the horses. When they arrive Morgana starts to mount hers, but stops when Gwen doesn’t.

“Let me guess,” she sighs, “We’re not riding the rest of the way.”

Gwen shakes her head.

It takes an hour, but they finally locate someone heading back to Axetown, a trader, who agrees to take the horses back to the tavern for a few gold coins, again from the saddlebags. Gwen pretends not to notice Morgana sneaking a few coins while her back is turned.

From then on it’s simply a matter of endurance. Around mid-morning the road takes them through another town, this one suspiciously empty.

“Hold on,” Gwen says, beginning to suspect. “It’s so quiet…” Morgana follows her as she slowly opens the door to a random house and peers inside.

“Yep,” she says, backing out quickly. “We’re in Camelot!” She shakes her head rapidly and tries in vain to erase what she just saw.

Morgana, curious, looks and is equally disturbed/horrified by the sight inside. 

“Are they dead?”

“Just asleep,” Gwen answers. “That’s going to be weird waking up to. Let’s keep going, that is unnerving and gross.” They hurry through the village, eager to be rid of the enchanted people.

In another hour or two Morgana sees the barest outline of a tower ahead: the citadel.  They pick up the pace a bit.

Gwen is too preoccupied to notice, but she has stopped limping altogether after the horse ride.

They stop when Gwen spots a familiar-looking tree.

“I know where we are!”

Morgana trace the letters “QG” into the bark.

“Q?”

“Queen Gwen. I was twelve. Bit of a power-hungry twelve-year-old. Anyway, it’s good I was, because now we know where to go.”

“Aren’t we just following the road back to the city?”

“Not yet. We’ve got to make a stop first.”

As Gwen leads then from the path and into the woods, she remembers what Kilgharrah told her.

_“What should I do when- if I get the stone?”_

_“When you retrieve the selenite,” Kilgharrah had thundered, “Return to me. The stone itself is not a weapon, only I can make it so.”_

_“So come back here?” The great dragon thought for a moment._

_“No. How well do you know the land around the city?”_

Gwen had answered “pretty well”, and it was proving to be true. She leads them without one misstep to a rocky valley near the hills, and stands on a rock to gaze at the citadel. This close, she can see the towns surrounding it.

“Why are we here?” Morgana asks, clambering up next to Gwen.

“We’re waiting for someone else. The selenite by itself can’t kill the shade.”

“The High Shade,” Morgana says, something like awe in her voice. “The power it must have taken…”

Gwen glares and says: “To release a demon from another realm and take over Camelot in an attempt to murder an entire kingdom.”

Morgana looks more irritated than abashed. She is about to says something when she instead yelps and points. Gwen follows her finger to the citadel, and watches as a black aura briefly illuminates a section of it.

“Black magic,” Morgana says as they watch the malevolent fireworks.

“What for?” Gwen whispers.

“You don’t have to whisper, they can’t hear us,” Morgana says at normal volume. “And I don’t know. Most likely trying to destroy something.

 _Something like Merlin!_ thinks Gwen. _Kilgharrah, hurry!_

“We should build a fire,” Gwen says. “He’ll probably be here soon, but it’s chilly.”

Morgana thinks about asking who “he” is, but, since Gwen is outright avoiding mentioning it, she refrains. She doesn’t really want to know, she suspects.

So Morgana silently magics up a fire and sits beside it with Gwen, irrational fear building in her chest. Just as noon passes and the sunlight starts to soften, Gwen and Morgana’s ears perk up. Something is _whooshing_ in the distance, something that is fast coming closer.

~xXx~

Kilgharrah pauses in his endless, restless circling as something new breaks through the haze of dark magic around the castle. Something a distance outside of the town, emitting a new taste of a magic, and a familiar one.

Hope sparks in his great chest, and he breaks out of his path to wheel towards the new source, towards the light in the distance.

~xXx~

The windy noise resolves into something suspiciously like wing beats, and as Gwen looks up expectantly Morgana scrambles backwards, disbelieving. A huge, terrifying shape is circling their camp. Morgana screams and starts to run, but Gwen grabs her arm and drags her back down.

“It’s a dragon!” Morgana yells at Gwen, but Gwen only nods. Then the dragon lands and Morgana doesn’t have time to run before she is pinned beneath enormous claws.

Gwen jumps up and runs toward Kilgharrah, who looks down at a screaming Morgana trapped beneath his claws with disgust.

“Let her go!” Gwen yells, waving her arms. “Kilgharrah! Let her go! Stop!”

The dragon rolls one great eye towards her.

“The witch,” he growls, “The dark sorceress who nearly destroyed us all. Tell me, girl, why is she here?”

Gwen glares right back at him, but at least Morgana has stopped screaming.

“There’s no need for that tone,” she says sternly, and Kilgharrah actually looks surprised. “She wants to help.” Kilgharrah gives a disbelieving snort.

“I do!” Morgana calls angrily from her makeshift cage.

“She says she regrets… somewhat regrets, anyway, what she did, and I believe her. She helped get back the necklace and offered assistance in getting rid of the High Shade. She has useful, powerful magic.”

“So you believe that your _friend_ regrets her actions, with no proof, after all she did? Forgive me, my lady, if I must question your judgment.”

“She’s not my friend,” Gwen says sharply, not looking at Morgana. “And the vilia confirmed that she was being honest.”

“You consulted the vilia?” Kilgharrah grumbles, caught off-guard. Gwen nods. “Tell me of your journey.”

Gwen settles on the ground and prepares to explain.

“Can you let me up first?” Morgana asks testily. Kilgharrah growls a “ _No_ ”, and Gwen tells the story.

It takes longer than expected. Morgana keeps interrupting and Kilgharrah gets angry at her whenever she does, but Gwen finally finishes her tale.

 There is silence in the clearing until she breaks it.

“So?” she asks impatiently. “Will you let her up? If the vilia could sense she was telling the truth, can you?”

Kilgharrah eventually answers, grudgingly: “I could.”

“Then do it, please.”

Kilgharrah turns his head and peers down his nose (snout?) at Morgana, who goes even paler, but speaks up.

“I r-regret what I did,” she stammers, somehow still managing to sound cold and aloof. “I wish to assist in dispelling the High Shade.”

Kilgharrah’s eyes roll and his tail twitches. Gwen fears he’s having a seizure, but after one more death-glare at Morgana, he lifts his foot just enough for her to scramble out and over to Gwen.

“The only reason I do not devour you this instant is because I am certain you would cause indigestion.”

Gwen feels a sudden wave of immense relief.

“Good,” she says, tired. “Morgana, this is Kilgharrah. I believe you’ve met.” Both of them turn and stare at her in annoyance. She sighs, and asks Kilgharrah: “Now, what’s the plan? Here’s the stone, what now?” She pulls out the necklace and pops the stone from its metal binding, holding it up. Kilgharrah sniffs it and nods, satisfied, then jerks his huge head towards a cluster of rocks.

“Grind it into powder,” he orders. “I suppose the witch can do this while you gather the other ingredient.”

Morgana, still obviously terrified, snatches the stone and places it in a natural bowl-like depression in the rock, and begins hitting it softly with another rock.

“And you,” Kilgharrah says imperiously to Gwen, “You must draw my blood.”

“What?” says Gwen, scrambling back. Visions of hacking the dragon’s head off fill her head. “I’m not going to do that!”

Kilgharrah sighs in exasperation.

“The blood of a dragon is what the powdered stone must be mixed with,” he explains.

“Convenient we have a dragon, then,” Morgana says. Kilgharrah breathes smoke at her and she yelps and glares at him, but tries not to make it obvious.

“I will allow you to take mine,” Kilgharrah continues magnanimously.

“How?”

Kilgharrah lumbers over to where Morgana is grinding the stone and peers, gargoyle-like, over her shoulder. She twitches and starts to sweat.

“That is sufficient,” he says after a moment. Morgana backs away quickly and the dragon positions himself so that one great leg is over the bowl.

“Do you have a blade?” he asks.

Gwen retrieves the sword and holds it up, and it receives the same checking-over that the stone did.

“Slice between scales, in a spot directly above the bowl. A shallow cut, if you don’t mind. Avoid my shoulder.”

 _Is that all?_ Gwen thinks irritably as she chooses a spot. Here Kilgharrah’s scales are two hands across, packed tightly together so that they partially overlap. Unfortunately for Gwen’s task, this makes it difficult to get the sword under them.

Maneuvering it is difficult, but she eventually slides the blade awkwardly under a scale and slices across. Kilgharrah makes a pained sound and blood drips in thick drops onto the powdered selenite, making it bubble viciously.

In seconds the blood stops and Kilgharrah moves away.

“Stir it,” he says. “Use your hands only. It will not hurt you.”

Morgana looks positively sick at the prospect so Gwen braces herself and sticks her hands in, grimacing at the warmth. She stirs the ingredients together until the powder is dissolved, then looks at Kilgharrah for the next step.

“It is lucky you have a sword already,” rumbles the dragon, “Otherwise you would have had to retrieve one. Spread the mixture over the blade, using as much as you can.”

Morgana kicks the sword over and Gwen scoops handfuls of the goop onto it, smearing the length of the blade, and somehow it doesn’t drip off.  Gwen is left staring in dismay at her bloody hands.

“Were you to consume it,” Kilgharrah says silkily, “Your magic would gain immeasurable power.” When Gwen looks at him, incredulous and disgusted, he adds. “But should you wipe it off on your clothes, it comes out with water.”

Gwen rolls her eyes and does just that, Morgana watching with an unidentifiable look, one that she doesn’t really want to identify.

“We will leave at dusk,” Kilgharrah says, and sits back on his haunches, obviously content to wait until then. Gwen sits, too, and looks over at Camelot. Another burst of black magic appears and disappears silently.

“How long have they been doing that?” Gwen asks. Kilgharrah too glances at the citadel.

“Since four days after you departed.”

Gwen begins to ask about Merlin, then glances at Morgana and thinks better of it. Then she looks back at the citadel and curiosity overrules caution.

“In Halesia I overheard King Abernard talking to the Shade while in the castle. It told him how they had tried hundreds of ways, but they couldn’t kill… him.”

“Kill who?” Morgana asks. Gwen looks at Kilgharrah, who rolls one eye. Gwen decides to interpret this as a go-ahead.

“…Emrys,” Gwen says carefully, using Merlin’s druid name. The reaction is instantaneous. Morgana half-rises to a crouch and literally snarls, eyes flashing. Kilgharrah is on her in an instant, tail sweeping her to the ground. He leans over her and snarls:

“I will not hesitate to kill you, should you react in a way I do not like to Merlin one more time.”

 _“Merlin?”_ Morgana spits, eyes wide, “ _Merlin,_ Arthur’s servant?”

Kilgharrah snarls at her, then tells Gwen to continue.

“They said no matter how they tried to kill him he remained unharmed. Why?”

Kilgharrah snorts angrily.

“The fools do not know the prophecies. I will tell you, but the witch may not hear.”

Gwen looks at the glaring Morgana and nods. Kilgharrah leans down and touches Morgana’s forehead with his nose and she slumps forward, eyes closed.

“Asleep,” Kilgharrah answers Gwen’s unasked question. “She will wake when I want her to.”

“Fine,” Gwen says. “Merlin…?”

“Ah, yes…” Kilgharrah says. “Merlin. Though it would be more appropriate to say “Merlin and Arthur”, in these circumstances. Has it never struck you odd, girl, that both still live after countless attempts on both their lives?”

“It does get a bit hard to believe, “Gwen says, remembering one instance in which Merlin hand miraculously (now she realized it was actually _magically_ ) rushed in to save Arthur just as a giant cockroach was about to feed him to its children. That one had made her list.

“It is because they are bound together by fate and destiny.”

“Aren’t they the same?” Gwen interrupts.

“No, now stop interrupting. The unique nature of Merlin’s bond with Arthur is such that they are, to use an analogy, two sides of the same coin, linked magically and spiritually.When one faces death or peril, the other will rescue him, every time. This is not mere speculation, mind, this is fact! One may not and cannot die while the other lives. If they cannot rescue each other, death will not take one.

“The High Shade is failing to kill Merlin every time because _Arthur_ still lives. The only way to kill one… is to kill both.”

“What if the shade figures it out, and has Arthur and Merlin killed together?” Gwen asks worriedly.

“Then they would both die, and there would be chaos. Much of destiny is wound around the two.”

Gwen has to lay back and think about this. It’s all very profound.

“You know…” she says eventually, “I think you might just be making it sound all serious and scary on purpose. I bet it’s all a lot less complicated than that.” 

Kilgharrah snorts angrily and tosses his head to the sky, but doesn’t deny anything.

 

 


	14. King's Beds and Killing Juice

At dusk Morgana wakes, irritated but without the knowledge of how to destroy Emrys, and the merry band sets out.

She is even more irritated, and more than a little terrified, when Kilgharrah self-righteously orders them to climb onto his back, stating that under ordinary circumstances he would be digesting them before they even suggested it, but that they are pressed for time.

Morgana clings to Gwen and shuts her eyes the whole way, only containing her screams because they would alert the enemy, while Gwen fights the urge to whoop out laughter, and lets one hand trail in the air currents until Kilgharrah tells her it throws off his balance.

After this it is surprisingly easy for Morgana and Gwen to quickly cross through the towns surrounding the citadel. Everyone is asleep, both naturally and under enchantment.

There is a slight mishap involving a patrol, a kicked stone, and a parrot, but it’s not worth mentioning.

“Do shades sleep?” Gwen whispers to Morgana as they’re walking beside the wall of the citadel towards the gate.

“They are not creatures of this world.”

 _So “_ no”, _then,_ Gwen translates, and when did Morgana become as cryptic as the bloody dragon? But nerves sweep her irritation away as they reach the gate.

She has the sword held tightly at her side, and Morgana, at her insistence, has conjured three witch-lights and has a defensive spell waiting in her hands.

“Okay,” Gwen says, trying to calm her stomach. “Into the courtyard, straight to delivery entrance. Ha. Delivery entrances, am I right?”

Morgana looks at her like she has a strange disease, and places a hand on the gate.  There is a breath, a grunt, and a word, and then the gate lifts slowly until it is a foot above the ground.

Gwen shimmies under and Morgana follows, breathing harder than seems necessary.

“Lifting a gate is that hard?”

“I am not yet fully recovered from the effects of the cuffs,” Morgana snaps, and both of them fail to see two knights running towards them until they’re right there.

By some miracle Gwen turns just in time to see the one coming towards her, and manages to raise her sword to block his. The next few moments are blurred, but she is pretty sure the man tripped over something and she took the opportunity to hit him on the head with the hilt of her sword.

She turns to help Morgana, but Morgana doesn’t need help. The other soldier is staring dreamily into space, singing softly under his breath.

“What did you do?” Gwen hisses.

“He’ll just be confused for a while,” the witch reassures, if grudgingly. “Not that I would care if he was permanently addled.”

Gwen glares at her but decides to forgo the argument, instead turning and traipsing towards the entrance in the distance.

“For goodness’ sake, stick to the shadows,” Morgana whispers as she runs up to Gwen and pulls her to the wall.

“It’s nighttime. The whole air is a shadow.” Morgana just keeps walking silently along by the wall.

 _Fine._ Gwen thinks. _We’re both probably too nervous for arguing anyway. I know I am. Which is why I should be_ concentrating on the plan.

Gwen concentrates on the plan. They sneak into the kitchens without any trouble, other than a little hysterical giggling from Gwen at the irony. _Escaping through here, sneaking back in through here._

 Gwen takes the lead, sneaking softly up the stairs.

“Where would the Shade be?” she whispers to Morgana, who is about to answer when an ear-splitting roar resonates from seemingly everywhere.

Gwen and Morgana hit the floor and half-panic before remembering the plan.

_“I will draw them out,” Kilgharrah had said. “You must use the time I give you wisely.”_

Gwen mentally berates herself for letting instincts get the better of her. But she’s never heard a sound like this.

It’s still going. Echoing off the citadel, wailing in circles through the sky. It is the sound of fury and monsters and things that go bump in the night. She can hear the chaos it’s causing: thundering footsteps from above, shouting voices, screams.

“Come on,” Gwen says, more to herself than Morgana. “All the knights are rushing to fight the dragon.”

“Hopefully,” Morgana adds. Gwen ignores her, something that’s becoming a habit of late.

Gwen looks out the first window they reach, and sees chaos. At least a hundred soldiers are swarming around the huge form of Kilgharrah, who dwarfs them easily. He is roaring and breathing fire into the air, sweeping the soldiers down with his tail.

“That must be almost everyone,” Gwen says. “Let’s find the Shade. He might be with Merlin.”

Morgana’s eyes narrow, and Gwen hefts the sword and squints at her meaningfully. Morgana takes the hint and sweeps an arm in a gesture for Gwen to lead the way.

She does, while experiencing severe déjà vu, tracing her path of days ago up stairs and through corridors to Arthur’s bedchamber.

“He was in here last time I saw him,” Gwen says, and places one hand on the door handle. Morgana raises her fists, a spell shimmering between them.

Gwen swings the door open and they rush in, sword raised and magic blasting a wave through the room, rippling curtains and bedcovers and shattering a mirror lying on the desk.

But having, unfortunately, no effect on an absent High Shade.

“Not here,” Gwen mutters, disappointed. A good impressive entrance, wasted.

“He was,” Morgana notes. “I can feel his magic. He was _just_ here.”

But someone is there, however, still tied to the bed. Or, the remains of a bed. Gwen hurries over to check on Merlin, but is rather brought up short by everything around him.

The “bed” is so much ribbons and charcoal, burned and slashed to pieces, odd fragments of stone and powder around it on the floor. The walls are splashed with substances and some of the stones have corroded and bubbled, and various barely-recognizable bits of weapons are sunk into what the mattress used to be. Everything seems to be covered in a purple, oily sheen.

Morgana stoops and tastes some of the greenish powder on the floor and looks impressed.

“Black magic residue. From those spells we saw earlier. That’s what the purple oil is, too. Killing juice.”

Gwen feels sick at the description and finally takes a look at the figure on the bed, though she really doesn’t want to. What kind of shape will Merlin be in, after all this…?

Pretty good shape indeed, apparently. Merlin is breathing quietly, serene in the destruction around him. His clothes have been shredded and burned- Gwen quickly retrieves a shirt from Arthur’s cabinet and covers him- but the man himself is fine, not a scratch on him.

“Well, at least we know he’s alright,” Gwen says.

“Yes,” Morgana hisses, “At least we know _Emrys_ is unharmed.” She looks slightly mad. Without hesitation, Gwen steps smartly over to her and slaps her hard on the cheek. Morgana stumbles back and looks at her in shock, though her eyes are clear again.

“Guinevere!”

“You do that creepy evil-eye thing again, and I’m telling Kilgharrah to eat you,” Gwen promises. “Now let’s go. If the Shade’s not here, where is he? We don’t have a lot of time!”

_How long until Kilgharrah is overwhelmed and leaves? Even a dragon can buckle under a hundred men. Or someone’s going to realize it’s a diversion._

The Shade is not in Uther’s old chambers, or the dungeons, though they don’t venture too deeply into those.

“The throne room,” Morgana says finally, and Gwen can’t believe they didn’t think of it before. She knows in her gut that the creature will be there, and has a sudden vision of it lounging on Arthur’s throne, mocking the kingdom with its very presence.

 She feels rejuvenated by anger, and, with fresh determination (at least on her part), she and Morgana trek back up the stairs from the dungeons.

By the time they’re at the huge doors that quite possibly lead to death, Gwen is fairly winded from the climb and fairly panic-ridden from thinking about what lay ahead while they climbed. The anger has quite worn off.

“Alright,” she says, trying not to throw up. “Here we go. Morgana. He probably has more people in there with him. Um. So. Plan. You take… oh god.”

She feels dizzy, so she doesn’t see Morgana’s hand until it has landed sharply on her cheek, stunning her for a moment. Clarity returns with a rush.

“Wow. I suppose that’s payback, but thanks.” She hops in place a little and shakes her head to clear it more. “Right. You do what you can with magic to disable them from afar, and whatever happens, don’t let the Shade escape. I’ll keep him busy until you can help me. Ready?”

“Are you?” Morgana asks, and a bolt of something like lightning spreads between her palms. Gwen raises the sword, puts one of the witch-lights on her shoulder for moral support, and shoves the doors open.

 

 


	15. Clever Retorts and Captured Men

If it were Arthur doing this, they would have opened quickly and dramatically. But they’re heavy, and because Gwen doesn’t regularly do this and so doesn’t have the practice Arthur does, they creak open slowly and Gwen hits her forehead when she tries to rush in.

In any case it’s only a bump and they make it through after a couple of seconds.

Here is the scene as they enter: The High Shade, who Gwen recognizes from her time in the cabinet, is not in fact sullying the throne of Camelot but looking through a window, presumably watching the fight outside. There are four others in the room with him, all standing in a semicircle around the room.

Gwen only has time to briefly register this before two knights are rushing at her, and the other two at Morgana.

One swings a sword and the other a spear, and Gwen dodges the first but not the second, which grazes her side. In a blur of movements they have her trapped against the wall, pointy weapons pointing at her.

Gwen feels rather disappointed in herself. Then Morgana calls: “Gwen!” and Gwen obligingly glances over to see Morgana losing rather spectacularly to the two knights, and _no way am I going to be defeated in five seconds! Thirty would have been okay, but five? Father would be ashamed!_

So Gwen grits her teeth, ignores her wound, and sweeps the sword around in a complicated pattern that she hasn’t practiced in years, and slashes a rather vicious cut on one knight’s arm, which is for some reason unprotected. The man drops his spear and Gwen kicks it away, then trips him with her ankle when he goes to retrieve it.

She has the urge to say something witty, perhaps like “Bet that fall really r _ankled_ you,” but quickly decides she doesn’t have the right brain for banter.

Instead she makes herself grin, something that has always unnerved her when others did it while fighting, and brings her sword up just fast enough to block the other knight’s.

 A flash lights up the room and the Shade gives a rasping yell of rage. Gwen really hopes Morgana just stopped him from magically leaving.

The man she’s fighting kicks her knee, which she really wasn’t expecting and now discovers is extremely painful, and she drops to the ground, also dropping her sword.  The man, obviously not about to show any mercy, raises his sword and she desperately tries to get away but his boot is on her stomachandshe’s going to die, goodbyeMorganasorryMerlinArthurKilgharrah-

The little witch-light that was hovering on her shoulder floats vaguely upwards and touches the sword just as it’s about to take off Gwen’s head. The blade just sort of vaporizes with the orb, covering Gwen with hot dust that makes her sneeze, and the man backs off suddenly, taken aback.

Gwen seizes the opportunity and, wheezing, swings her leg out and kicks the man’s shin. He goes down with a wail, and Gwen thinks _it really shouldn’t have hurt him that much, oh, wait- ankle._

“Bet that fall really r _ankled_ you,” she says when she’s hopped up quickly, and registers with dismay a slack, horrified disbelief at the words before she grabs her sword and hits his head with the butt of it.

“Gwen!” Morgana shouts again. “The Shade!” Morgana looks like she can take the two still attacking her, so Gwen looks for the Shade, finds him doing something complicated with his hands by the far wall, and runs over to him.

Tries to run over.

Falls over.

“Ouch,” she mutters, but pushes herself back up, gripping her side tightly, and hobbles towards the shade as fast as she can.

 “That was absolutely atrocious,” the High Shade says when she gets close enough. “ _Rankles_.”

“Shut up,” Gwen mutters, waving the sword. “I’m going to kill you.” _I hope._

The Shade ignores her and continues waving his hands until a black net appears between them, stretching worryingly.

“That’s a widow’s net,” Morgana calls, who only has one soldier left, but who is, unfortunately, a sorcerer. “It will suck the life from you.”

The Shade throws the thing at her and it expands as it flies, and Gwen sees her life flash before her eyes for the second time. She can’t run or dodge it, so she just holds up the sword and hopes for a result, closing her eyes.

The result is that the net shears in two around the blade, and the Shade is speechless. Gwen takes the opportunity to lunge toward him with the sword, which he deflects with his own hastily conjured one.

“How?” he hisses, mostly to himself. Gwen doesn’t know either, but she suspects it’s the dragon’s blood.

Morgana screams behind her, and Gwen turns to look, which is a mistake. The Shade, obviously not trained with a sword but grasping the basics, swings clumsily and cuts Gwen’s arm.

Gwen registers the pain at about the same time she registers that Morgana has been trapped in a glow-y circle of what looks like liquid fire that the sorcerer conjured up, and by sheer force of will Gwen manages to switch the sword to her other hand before she drops it. Her injured arm hangs at her side, feeling like fire, and the Shade starts to weave another spell.

Gwen tries to say something, possibly witty, but it comes out as a grunt so she just swings the sword awkwardly in her non-dominant hand.

It glances off the Shade’s arm, who looks suddenly frightened as his skin starts smoking.

“Dragon’s blood?!” he yells, outrage on his face. But he only looks angry, not dying.

_“You must stab through the heart,” Kilgharrah had said clearly. “Only the heart will kill it, do you understand?”_

Gwen certainly understands now as a furious High Shade hacks at her with a sword made of flames. Gwen ducks awkwardly and her injured arm swings both comically and painfully, and then she dodges one strike rather ineptly and trips forward and the Shade does too, stumbling a few steps, and trips over Gwen’s ankle.

Gwen is tempted to simply pass out from outrageous coincidence, but pulls it together and stabs as hard as she can into the Shade’s heart.

He doesn’t even manage a shocked expression before his body bursts into green confetti, spraying the entire room with ash.

She stares at where his body was in shock, and her arm, side, knee, and ankle throb at the exact same time, and she tries not to throw up.

“Gwen!” Morgana shrieks again, and Gwen looks up to see her and the sorcerer still battling. Gwen trips over to the man and raises the sword.

“I just killed a High Shade with this,” she says as threateningly as she can manage, “So back off, sorcerer.”

The man looks affronted.

“I prefer “wizard”, if you don’t mind.”

“Wizard, then,” Gwen corrects, because she tries not to be hypocritical, “Go away.”

“Would you talk to your mother like that?” the wizard says smarmily. “Say please.”

“Please.” The wizard disappears in a puff of gold smoke.

“He did the smoke separately,” Morgana says. “It isn’t a side-effect of vanishing like that. It was just flashiness.”

Gwen giggles hysterically and looks at her arm and throws up. Morgana rubs her back gingerly. Gwen then spends an embarrassing minute trying to get the pronunciation right before she finally heals her arm, and then her side. She decides her knee can wait when she sees spots, but Morgana does it for her.

“What about you?” she asks, looking the witch over.

“I’m fine. I siphoned off some of that sorcerer’s power while he wasn’t looking.”

“Wizard.” Morgana throws up her hands.

“Hey,” Gwen says, punching Morgana on the shoulder. “Look! We did it!”

Morgana takes a look at the mess and wrinkles her nose.

“Kilgharrah,” Morgana says. She crosses to the window with Gwen and they look out. Kilgharrah has decimated most of the soldiers and is toying with the ten or so left as if they’re cats, letting them run up to his tail with swords raised and then jerking it away.

Morgana leans out and sends a burst of red and gold fireworks above the citadel. Kilgharrah sees and gives an approving roar (Gwen hadn’t realized she could tell the tone of his roars apart, now) and takes to the sky, circling once and flying away.

“Show-off,” Gwen mutters. Below them the towns are spread out, and lights are flicking on. Camelot is waking up in the middle of the night.

“If you want to get on Arthur’s good side we’d better find him,” Gwen says to Morgana. “Before everyone panics.”

“Too bad they couldn’t stay asleep for longer,” Morgana says wistfully, but follows Gwen out the doors.

“If we get something from his room, I can find him,” Gwen says.

Merlin is still snoring peacefully on Arthur’s bed, so Gwen leaves him as he is and grabs another one of Arthur’s shirts out of the cabinet.

She clears her throat and holds a hand over it.

“Aberst pen agon.” After several more embarrassing tries, Morgana says helpfully:

_“Ábeþecest þæs ágan.”_

Not looking at her, Gwen repeats it, and the shirt grows hot and then dims, but stays warm.

“He’s in the castle, at least,” Gwen says, hoping she’s reading it right. They have to dodge newly awoken guards and nobles in distress while they follow the shirt’s directions, but at one point Gwen sees Leon and grabs his arm.

“Thank goodness you’re okay!” Leon gapes at her, sweeps her into a hug, then backs away, blushing.

“Pardon me, my Lady. I simply-”

“I’m glad you’re alive too, Leon,” Gwen says, patting the knight’s arm. “Now listen. Everyone’s been asleep for a week, so the kingdom is panicking. Arthur says to tell you to send all the nobles back to their rooms and gather all the knights in the throne room. There are enemy soldiers on the grounds, just throw them in the dungeons, okay? And there’s a mess that needs to be cleaned up, too, you’ll see when you get there.”

“But-”

“Leon! Now is not the time to argue! _King Arthur’s_ orders! Nobles, knights, enemies, throne room. In an hour he wants it taken care of and the knights assembled before the throne. Go!”

Leon hightails it away from them and Morgana steps out of the shadows.

“Nicely done,” she says.

“Let’s just find Arthur before he panics too.”

They find him in the dungeons, locked in a cell and yelling at the top of his lungs, most definitely panicking too.

“Arthur!” Gwen shouts, rather louder. “Shut up and listen.” Arthur looks affronted at being spoken to in such a manner, but rather pleased as well. _Probably missing Merlin_ , Gwen thinks rather scathingly, but in her defense, it’s been a long night.

Then Morgana steps into Arthur’s sight and he loses it again, hurling words like they can cut. Gwen looks at the sword in her hand and then at the two fighting siblings, and swings it as hard as she can at the metal bars of the cell.

The noise is painfully loud and it echoes off the walls. Morgana claps her hands to her ears and Arthur tries to do the same, but it’s hard when your hands are chained to the walls.

“Arthur,” Gwen says, striving for calm. “Listen to me. You trust me, yes? I am not enchanted. Camelot has been asleep for nine-” she remembers it was sunrise when she looked outside, “Ten days. I killed the Shade that did it, but everyone is panicking. Pretend like Morgana isn’t here for now, you need to restore order before a riot starts.”

Arthur’s face rapidly cycles through emotions like a wagon wheel, but when he’s finished he nods.

“Morgana?” Gwen asks, and the witch opens first the lock on the cell and then those on Arthur’s cuffs, which are thankfully not magical.

“Is Merlin alright?” Arthur asks, striding ahead of them out of the dungeon.

“Fine,” Gwen says. “When you’ve done your king stuff and stopped everyone going mad, we all need to go to your room.”

Arthur no doubt would very much like to be going mad with everyone else right now, but Gwen thinks she has effectively waylaid that rout, and he very determinedly ignores Morgana, who looks a little put out, like she could use a good fight.

On the way to the throne room they meet Leon, who goes pale at the sight of Arthur.

“My lord, it hasn’t yet been an hour,” he babbles uncharacteristically.

“Leon,” Arthur says calmly, clapping a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Tell me what is happening.”

Leon takes a deep breath and settles into “knight mode”.

“My lord, the nobles are waiting in their rooms as per your request, and the knights are rounding up the last of the Halesian soldiers as we speak. They are already being taken to the dungeons. The knights who were more… out of sorts are cleaning the throne room. We will be done within the hour just like you requested. My lord.”

If Arthur is surprised by anything Leon says, he hides it well.

“You have another two hours,” he says. “I apologize for the earlier haste; I had not yet known the full extent of the chaos that the kingdom has been thrown into. Send knights out to the upper and lower towns and tell everyone to stay inside. I will make an address when the sun has risen.”

Leon nods and hurries away, and Arthur wordlessly leads the girls up to his bedchamber. He doesn’t expect to see Merlin on the destroyed bed, and lets out an incomprehensible strangled sound as he rushes over and checks him over.

“What is going on?” he grits out, having assured Merlin isn’t broken and in the process of untying him. “What happened to him?”

“Poisoned,” Morgana says wickedly form behind Gwen, who elbows her sharply in the stomach and holds up her hands to stave Arthur off.

“If you calm down, I will tell you everything.”

Arthur sits next to Merlin on the bed, and Gwen finally sinks to the ground and drops the sword. She is exhausted, but there is time for one more tale.

 

 

 


	16. Epilogue

 A Week Later

The little troop of four steals into the night, which really goes against one of the group’s instincts, but the other three convince him to do it anyway.

They hike, bantering uncontrollably back and forth, to a small, rocky valley a few hours outside of the lower town. Thankfully, they are all dressed for the trip, despite the aforementioned one’s protests.

Silently this time, and without call, Kilgharrah circles the valley where one of the group has lit a fire and lands, peering at the four who have the threads of destiny wrapped around them like spiders in a web.

Merlin and Gwen are the most at ease around the Great Dragon, Merlin truly surprised that Kilgharrah, as he put it, “is so fond of you, Gwen”. Gwen would have put it something like “doesn’t want to eat me as much as some other people,” but she supposes Merlin knows the dragon better.

Morgana stays stubbornly away from Kilgharrah, but at least it’s reciprocated, because Kilgharrah refuses to pay attention to her except to snort puffs of smoke in her direction.

Arthur, surprisingly, hasn’t met the dragon before, and so approaches him with a mixture of caution, apprehension, and awe, that melts into annoyance and ruefulness as Kilgharrah spouts off a ballad’s worth of poetry on the bond between Merlin and Arthur.

The dragon watches as Morgana awkwardly hugs Arthur, nods jerkily at Merlin, and gives another hesitant hug to Gwen, then drags her feet over to him.

She climbs onto his back, settles on his scales and holds onto a sturdy spike in front of her for dear life, though they aren’t even in the air yet. 

Gwen, Merlin, and Arthur watch and wave as Kilgharrah takes flight, Morgana flapping a hand over the side quickly then huddling as close as she can to the scales, and then the strange duo has disappeared into the night.

Merlin hugs Gwen and Arthur claps her on the back and promises her a knighthood, and then they put out the fire so as not to burn down Camelot just after Gwen has saved it and head for home.

 

 


End file.
